Final Fantasy Hacktics

Maybe I'm imagining things, but isn't there a Hack that multiplies experience gains by zero so it does not increase Level?

Reasoning:

Set all characters to 50+original variance.  Their current Exp and Lv never change.  Dismiss instances of Degenerator (or retool them to perform another effect).  Any instance of Level Increase/Reduction ability is altered.  Equipment appears piss-poor, but can be altered so that some have qualities that others lack, so you now have a wider selection instead of things that get outdated by level.

Alternative: have equipment values improve by the level of characters equipping them.  One man's Aegis Shield is different from another man's Aegis Shield by virtue of level.  One man's broadsword is superior to another man's rune blade by virtue of level.  How that can be achieved will probably cause a sane programmer a heart attack.  I prefer the former.

Holy shit, it's the Blackram!

I don't suppose you've posted about what you'd like to do with your own sprites in a thread for your mod in general.  Also, there will be people who will swipe these puppies once they're done.  The Ranger, for instance, once completed, will breathe life into the concept.

Also, Treasure Finder could be reworked so that, after collecting the item, it still prevents you from getting hit by the trap afterwards.  That could be something that you can train in, instead of being Innate (so that enemy Hunters don't happen upon stuff like in FFT+ 1.01B).  It would require an ASM, but they've went and got a Blade Grasp switch, so....

Of course he is.  Other things like life might get in his way, but I'm sure he'll have the ground-up revamp out soon.

Given that Brave and Faith do not carry over, you'd need some altered Br/Fa-adjusting Abilities that will make characters very likely to react.  Brave and Faith, if set to random, fluctuate between 45-74 for in-battle and 40-70 for out-battle (eggs and soldier office).  Given that, the mean Reaction rate becomes somewhere around 55-59.5%.  This is a feature used in the Arena Combat battles that the Pimp holds on the same YouTube page.  In Arena Combat, it's meant to prevent characters from being high-octane Br against low-grade Fa for defensive purposes, in addition to accompanying rules such as minimums and maximums for Br and Fa across each of the four characters.

It's a shot towards ameliorating some of the depravity of the RNG when handling various amounts of Br and Fa.  At first glance, it sounds okay.  You could even bring back Shirahadori/Blade Grasp because Br and Fa are not transferable after battle and thus you have to pump up Br and Fa to promote frequent Reaction usage.  The decreased reliability of that translates to greater use of Parry and Abandon/Reflexes, since they don't give a damn about the amount--they're just filling the slot.  But what else could you apply such a concept?  I mean, you got rid of one of the unique processes for Brave and altered weapons that once favored the courageous (Knight Swords and Unarmed).  Why not extend this kind of thinking to Magic as well?  Perhaps we could have a formula like this:

Mg = [(A+35)+(X+35)+(B+35)+(Y+35)/1000000]

Where A & X = Caster Br and Fa and B & Y = Target Br and Fa.

This means that Morale is pretty much homogenized to an extent that it doesn't really matter which one you got.  It's just two separate numbers that do the exact same thing.  Any situation that calls either for a Br-based check or an Fa-based check then becomes a Morale-Based check.

There are some radical issues with this.  The first is that characters with high brave can become good mages.  However, characters with low faith can still be mages.  Magic, however, has even less power than previously because you need both to generate top-form results.  Also, the status effects Faith and Innocent/Atheist (I prefer Heathen for the latter) suddenly have diminished effects.  Of course, they also prevent them from being totally overwhelming.  Character concepts such as Worker8 suddenly don't work.  The thing can get nailed by Magic!  Also, what the hell do we do with Malak's Un-Truth/Nerakayana technique?

Frankly, I am of the camp that says, if you want something better, then keep what works.  Don't mix Brave and Faith into an end-all about one's Reaction Ability.  Instead, consider another possibility, based on the Critical Hit/Knockback formula.  The Knockback is one's Brave turned against another; if one is superior, the other has a lesser shot at suffering a normal hit.  That is [CBr(100-TBr)] so, if applied to Reaction Abilities....

Suppose Ramza nails one of those goddamned Blackthorn goblins (the black ones) and risks setting off its repulsive Strength Save ability.  That will just raise its ire.  However, if the Blackthorn is 70 and Ramza is 70.  The Blackthorn has an equal 70% shot at getting his proc.  What if Ramza was temporarily Doomguy Berserker-Packed with 100 Brave?  Well, then the Blackthorn will have a reduced chance at getting his Reaction Ability done.  If it was lower, then the Blackthorn gets a slightly improved chance at it landing.

Here's what the breakdown would be:

70*70=4900, 100*70=7000; 4900/7000=70% (obviously)

80*80=6400, 100*70=7000; 6400/7000=91% (holy shit!)

40*40=1600, 100*60=6000; 1600/6000=27% (God damn...)

60*60=3600, 40*40=1600; 3600/1600=+100% (Oh, dear)

Oh wait, wait... let me try that again:

60*60=3600, 100*40=4000; 90% (did that one in my head).

Even if the Caster had superior Brave, the odds of provoking a Reaction Ability is still below 100% certainty.  Hey wait a minute!  That solves all kinds of problems with game-breaker Reactions, even if you redid their variables in orgasm.  (Oh, man, I should just hit Post on this thing already).

Well... that didn't go quite where I expected.  Even if you make a rival formula, the outcome would not be so different.  This could be a horrifying experience if your Brave was lower than your enemies.  You'd freeze in the wake of their positive attitude.  This would make Morale-altering stats a nightmare to behold.

[CB*TB/10000]

Okay, lets try the obvious avenue and see if we get somewhere else.

70*70=4900/10000 = 49%

Wait, what?  You have a decreased overall likelihood?

90*90=8100/10000 = 81%

Well, that's not too bad.

30*30=900/10000 = 9%

Okay, that one's just fucked up.  Ignore the alternative.  It's also ridiculous since that 100- with the Target Brave should have been the grand balancing act.  100*100 is just plain wrong and goes against every iota of common sense in my psyche.

Yeah, well I'd love to share more insights but my idea is: don't go forward by mixing Brave and Faith together with Reactions.  You can mix Caster Brave and Target Brave with a hundred thrown on the Target's side and divide by ten thousand, resulting in near-perfect but never absolute numbers, paired with a change where Blade Grasp doesn't cover all weapon types, if you're really ambitious (one exists), but other than that, don't get cocky changing up Reaction Ability procs with Faith.

About Berserk & Blood Suck:

Are Berserk and Blood Suck hard-coded into sending your character into an automatic mode, or can it be switched so that you, instead, must live with some drawbacks while essentially regaining control of your character?

I understand that suffering the status effect means you start to use a particular command constantly.  Does Blood Suck...
A) draw upon the actual Blood Suck Command Ability, or...
B) does it just run around, picking a Ability over and over?

I bet it's B, but that's my point in the first question.

Reasoning:

Berserk, in SaGa Frontier II, dismisses the use of Anima Arts (magic) and enhances the character's Weapon Arts (high direct damage).  Figured this could be make-or-break, meaning the enemy AI could cast it on their own guys if they were so inclined.

Like Silence and Frog, certain monster skills, magic, and intellect-oriented abilities (stock-based ones like Item, Salve/Heal, etc.) would be restricted, while it otherwise enhances virtually every martial technique and permit their use.  Pummel and Cyclone?  Yes.  Chakra, Aurabolt, Shockwave, Doom Fist, Revive and Stigma Magic?  No.  Dash and Throw Stone?  Yes.  Salve and Focus?  No.  Charge/Aim?  Yes.  Stat-Adjusting Break Arts yes (but not gear-smashing ones).  Steal, no.  As usual, reaction abilities except Reflexes and Parry, as well as Movement ability effects that proc something upon resolution, would be negated as well.

Essentially, a playable Berserk featuring limited tactical options.  Considering how Frog works on a character, it's possible at least in theory to make Berserk into something similar.

Meanwhile, Blood Suck has its own Command Ability.  Once you are afflicted Blood Suck, you're automatic and use this ability exclusively, going after the first person you see.  Suppose if you, instead of losing control of your character, ended up playable yet with an alternate, overriding Command Set Ability that featured thematic options beyond sucking blood, taken from the aforementioned Command Ability?  (E.G. able to use Allure to charm any enemy, or a modified Dark Whisper that adds Protect, Shell, Haste, Transparent and Innocent to oneself.  Things you get when you become a vampire, other than going around sucking blood all the time--that's just cheesy).

I know at the very least the Command Ability can be switched so to make those situations where characters with that ability become far more intimidating, like a whole new set of options to torture your party with (I would use the Vampire Cat version of the Ability itself to prevent hair-pulling agony).  As debilitating a condition Blood Suck is, it should rearrange how the character operates in the fight.  If you ditched it for thematic purposes and replaced it with something like "Accursed" or "Insane" (I mean not even Confusion-grade--just really fucking depraved go-after-everybody spiel), if you had the option to make it playable, you'd have a list of unique commands that are just gonzo.

In either case, what does Silence do?  Well, it affects magic across the board, so obviously Berserk handles that and more.  It's just easier to treat because Silence doesn't restrict all possible recovery options.  Berserk would also not restrict Word Skills, while Silence obviously would.  This would apply to Ramza's unique skills, assuming he still has those.

I've checked the FFTPatcher, and there are checkmarks, many of which are blank in their description (and thus, I'm frightened to even touch them), so I suppose someone devised an assembly language hack that I didn't spot.  If not, I will probably be forced to comprise one, assuming it's at all possible.



Draw Out/Iaido

Is it possible to assembly-hack Draw Out/Iaido so it does not check for stock, but instead checks for what the character has equipped in the right or left hand?

Reasoning:

I figured the Samurai needed a facelift, since Iaido is used more than the Class once a player A) gets the blades, B) gets the skills, and C) Class Changes to a fucking Black Mage.

Essentially, tell the game to check for what is equipped in your hands to determine if you may Draw Out the technique.  It would then see what weapon it is, what ability it is associated with, and then ask for targeting and confirmation.

For Iaido, if Equipment-Dependent, you need the following:
Ability Licensing
Equipped Katana
Restrict Katana from Dual-Wielding (sorry assassin girl) to dodge bugs
and Abolish breakage, its purpose during the "stock days" served.

Iaido would become akin to Geomancy, requiring a specific blade held in the hands instead of a terrain type.  The Samurai would have Innate Double-Grip for enhanced sword striking power, longbow and shields are made available, and Innate Re-Equip so players have choices and not pull their hair out, making both the ability and class engaging again.  Given its loss of flexibility, Iaido techniques would receive slightly improved power, or retain the goodness they already have.  Since the AI cannot Re-Equip, enemy Samurai encounters will sport rare, powerful, or useful blades to stay competitive with the player.

Otherwise, with stock access, the Iaido Command in Vanilla is abusive, better than sex because it assumes everyone lugs their entire arrowhead collection around in battle.  It's rule of cool subordinating suspension of disbelief big time.  If I recall Japanese swordsmanship terminology, Iaido is simply quick-drawing techniques, flashy readying of a blade at a moment's notice (bonus points if you hit an enemy and not yourself or a buddy).  Not that adding mysticism on top is a bad thing, but what should matter is not what you have in stock, but what you have in your hands.

Thank you for your time.

I got the dihydrogen monoxide immediately.  Gerin Oil, on the other hand, that took some reading before I started rearranging the letters.  Yeah, Dawkins is such a peach.

Militant anything is a stone around everyone's neck.  It doesn't matter what you believe to be right.  What you believe to be wrong is what determines whether or not you lose touch with reality and (perhaps) spirituality.

It gets spammed by grinders.  Superior abilities means easier time.  You'll have to get creative with what you got.  Fortunately, whatever the AI tries on you, you can (eventually) try on them.  Try an Archer and get Train, then have a Squire accompany the Monster into battle.

I'm enjoying the paths taken with the Kind Of patch and in certain ways I like it as much as or even more than the Tactics Plus.  This should get its own section, entirely.

Monsters actually have teeth.  The ranged Choco-Cure makes grinding at Mandalia Plains a life-or-death situation.  Not to mention Choco-Esuna being able to revive dead monsters.  Altering every monster's initial attack to contain benefits as unavoidable or adding a debilitating condition is a stroke of genius.

I finished Chapter One and got the sudden idea: isn't there a music-free version of the game?  Like you said, multiple patches can lead to errors, but can a simple patch to turn off the music work out after patching or should a music-free patch exist instead?

Oh, and this one's hard in a decent way: Tactics hard without pulling utterly infuriating stunts on the player.  Excellent job so far.  Looking forward to PSX2.4.

Think I went overboard.  Personally.

I would carefully weigh her stances on issues before choosing to vote for her.  Knowing she plays World of Warcraft might get me to vote elsewhere, not because I think video games suck, but that they, like any hobby, are among the most distracting things on the planet today.  I wouldn't question her competence, I'd question her punctuality.  I've seen what an MMO can do to someone's free time.  It ain't pretty.  If, however, she stands by my ideas and is also otherwise competent in meeting those demands, by all means.  Only, never tell me what you do in your spare time.  Oh, and never let others tell me what you do in your spare time, either.

Whereas every reconstructive engineer in this site wishes to do away with them.  Entirely.

I've been delving into Neverwinter Nights and also Zelda Classic (the rebuilt LoZ), including custom quests.

I say yes.

I wonder if the same sorts of reactions came out when they announced the merger of Squaresoft and Enix Corporation.

I'd say the idea of releasing one RPG per month over the year 2,000 was the real coffin nail since none of those games did well enough to keep the company afloat.  They released Vagrant Story in May, and that was the last RPG of the era I remember fondly.  SaGa Frontier II also came out, and one of its perceived selling points was "breathtaking watercolor painting art" that drove the visual direction and effects.  Really?  Then there was Chrono Cross, which disappointed and shattered the fans who awaited a genuine sequel and ended up with a supposed remake of a game they never got to play (paired with the exclusion of a principle ensemble dark horse with no explanation behind why that would be a good thing).  Amidst all this, did anybody get the chance to go out and get a copy of Threads of Fate?  The demo played well, but I never got the chance to buy a copy.  Seriously, they pumped out too much and too fast, giving their clients little regard for their barren wallets and looming debut of the PS2.  In fact, pumping them out quickly was kind of the reason these games weren't as good as they should have been--Vagrant Story was meant to be on two discs and feature up to two additional player characters, for instance.  With that said, Squaresoft was making a series of major financial blunders, which necessitated drastic action.  Like Nobuo taking off a few years later.

Squaresoft was hurting financially and several key figures did a mass exodus at the millennial turn.  To put the altered business sense (scruples?) into perspective, the first Final Fantasy installment was FFX-2, a marked departure from the typical over-dark themes that actually began to mar the franchise into predictability and spawn countless nineties comic anti-hero-esque games and characters after FFVII hit in sales.  FFX-2 represented the beginning of the end in some people's eyes, what with its bubbly premise and its laughable cheap-shot exploitation angle.  In perspective, the real problem was lack of innovation, with stagnant concepts that only bled their way into sales.  Lots of people bought VII, a percentage bought VIII, still another percentage of that bought IX.  And if that's all you're known for....

So a company merger--with a mingling of resources and ideas--was a shot at surfacing from that trend.  Maybe Lucasfilm, having been the buttmonkey after the modern Trilogy of Star Wars movies, has suffered enough financial fallout to consider being bought out.  Besides, Lucasfilm is better known as an industry leader (one of them) in special effects.  Most of their productions revolve around testing the latest film-making techniques of the era.  Disney wants some pizzazz in their live-action movies and I can't say I blame them.  Unless Disney explicitly announces an attempt to release a new Star Wars movie, I am not frightened by the merger.

Wasn't that already posted at Creepypasta?  If not, do so now.

So... you're saying I shouldn't have to worry?  I could have sworn Delita (during Chapter III) adjusted his hands subtly during his vengeance-against-the-system speech, like the second-to-last key-press.  Now, if that was just because his is a long delay for whatever reason and I was mistaken, then thank God.

Don't forget to actually read the thing and point out how absurd/insane/bad/so-bad-it's-good it is.

Get ready to drink from the garden hose.

When playing a new version of an old (or modified) game, an updated script creates refreshing immersion, as does altered game assets and mechanics (like with Plus or Celdia's).  Having one is good, marrying them is sweeter.  Why else did WotL become a modest hit?  The major flaw is how it never fixed bugs like the Shirahadori thing; developers didn't care.  Guess we're their antitheses, but ignoring the script completely, especially with content changes, is a fatal flaw.  We're only here for Godzilla--making the game harder or fairer--but few bother with the translation.  Part of what made the game hard is that the bad translation of the tutorial left us in the dark.  Can't we change that?

Enclosed is a preliminary revised script of Final Fantasy Tactics, loosely based on sugnuf's translation, that approximates how I would key the text assets into EasyVent (hence the length and triple columns).  Citing the games' soulless lack of humor, I realize why the WotL version got purple: Tactics really is a dry political treatise disguised as a Final Fantasy gaiden.  Version 0.1 scrubs awkwardness and spices up an otherwise wooden-sounding script.  Author notes help explain changes made or address its absurdity head-on; take it with a grain of salt.  I seek to devise a full revision of all text assets and post them as templates available for download.

Content Warning!  This is neither Teen-rated nor formatted as a screenplay.  I choose not to get shit past the radar, I throw shit at the radar instead.  You may contend changes in this thread, but remember: its gratuitousness is a stealth parody of the coarse themes of FFVII--the analogy follows how "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen" bore us "Nineties Comic Anti-Heroes".  Everyone followed suit with darker themes, so if Tactics followed a trend, we can rail it.  A cleaner version is pending after the flame war over this one's absurdity.  It will more than likely be a copy-pasta of sugnuf's translation.

Customs are possible on request, provided you PM me a full Master's Guide / design doc and concrete, immutable specifics well beforehand.  (Never change horses midstream).  Don't expect immediate results; the text I've altered due to blind-idiot translation thus far is staggering.  I am almost finished with TacText and yet started there months ago!  Don't forget I'm still doing this for Dome's patch first and foremost.

I understand some {codes} in the draft are inconsistent with EasyVent, such as {0xf4}, TacText's pausing function.  I used these to point out "Beats", literally when the text would pause briefly before continuing for emphasis.  They will be replaced with EasyVent's equivalent, {delay:XX}{delay:XX}.  I bet the hex represents milliseconds.  This is to avoid having to set up multiple {br} break symbols, as I have the paranoid assumption that a character's animations are governed by the number of key-presses during a monologue.  If the number of key-presses must be exact from the original, I'm going to ram my head through the monitor.

Anyway, enjoy!

You mean {delay:0F} {delay:00}, right?  Yeah, I got that.  It was written in the sequences where text was laid out in front of a background painting.  Good to point out though.  If I am thinking straight on how a delay works, it literally counts the hex-code as milliseconds, right?

Figuring out how far an 0F delay goes next to a 5F delay should be inordinately simple... once some prior testing is done.  There's Sturgeon's Law going on.  Why else would I make an attempt.

Anyway, thanks for clearing that up.  Now it's a question of how long a beat lasts for it to be meaningful in context to the scene.  The l i t t l e  m o n e y gag shouldn't happen.

Is there a "Beat" code in EasyVent?  If so, what is it?

I deduced that the {0xf4} code in TacText pauses the progression of text until the player presses Circle--this from checking what Mustadio says in TactText when you query his name in the Formation screen: "Just aim. (Beat) You don't need to charge your gun!"  Beowulf also has a similar setup for what he says.  This led me to conclude that all text (and why not?) has a pause/unpause property as it progresses.  Stop me now if I'm wrong about anything I've said.

TacText is lucid about what it does, while EasyVent is another story.  Is it the same code?  I don't want to make assumptions, even though I'm itching to say yes, because the {Newline} function does a similar function as the {br} (break) function.  Since EasyVent contains all the cinemas and battles, I figured as part of dressing the script, there could be Beats involved.  Unless it would interrupt the game's impression of when a message has ended or the next action has begun, in which case it would cause too much trouble for what it's worth...

Beats in scripts help establish when a meaningful pause of at least a second or three is necessary.  Often, it's after you finish a sentence without quickly skipping to the next one.  It's a good tool for dramatic tension, in other words.  Tactics' script would not suffer for pausing meaningfully.  If not, then the whole script would require countless {br} breaks, and for someone using Square back-scrolling, that might prove tedious while reading a re-translated version of the game.  I'm trying to make this scheme work as well as look pretty.