Final Fantasy Hacktics

The Link
Website: http://fft.cerabow.net
Download link is available at the above site and will change with new versions.

The Info
A rebalance patch for the PS1 FFT which buffs underpowered skills, nerfs overpowered skills, and aims to create a more balanced, interesting, and slightly more challenging experience. The mod takes inspiration from several other projects and weaves in a number of different core balancing concepts.

FFT Cerabow's Mod includes a rebalancing of the entire game, including buffing underpowered skills, nerfing overpowered skills, and many other changes. The mod is not designed to be a difficulty hack, but instead fixes numerous issues with the original and opens the door to a variety of new strategies. Overall, units have more HP, deal less damage, and it's uncommon for 1-hit kills to occur. The enemy AI has access to far more skills than they did in vanilla, so just because you petrified half their team doesn't mean they won't remove it and then hit you back with it. Various strategies which were overshadowed by broken skills in vanilla are now very viable in the game now. Bosses which previously had laughably low HP now challenge your ability to setup a party for an enduring fight. Healing and MP restoration are nearly a requirement now in some form, and status effects can easily swing the tide in anyone's favor. Grinding for skills is not nearly as necessary, as the JP cost of skills have been drastically reduced, with many basic skills only costing 20 JP, and the strongest abilities in the game costing a maximum of 500 JP. The in-game help text has also been updated drastically to provide the player with as much information as possible, including hinting at whether an ability is physical or magical, or if it uses Faith at all.

In general, there are WAY too many tiny changes across the entire game to specifically mention. Some big highlights are:

• Reduced JP costs
• +1 movement to all
• Increased HP and MP values
• Lowered damage values
• Reduced the chance for one-hit KOs (still possible but very uncommon)
• Removed Zodiac Compatibility
• Standardized unit stat growth
• War Trophies, Move-find Items, and Poaching items don't suck
• Multiple Quality of Life hacks added courtesy of the amazing people on this site

Several "challenge" runs have been completed with the mod, including 4/5 magic class focus (only one unit using "physical" job classes), 100% physical classes only (and item), Squire and Chemist only plus Agrias, and more. Challenges like Archer Solo Single Class Challenge (SSCC) are likely impossible with the mod or are at the very least not fun.

This mod has been in development on and off since 2009. Between July 2018 and December 2019 it underwent extensive closed-beta testing. Closed beta testers had their names added to the FFT random name pool. They might show up in battles and try to kill you! It is currently in open-beta as of January 2020.

The Contributors (Whether they know it or not)
I did not make this mod by myself, but I compiled it alone. Below is a list of everyone who made something I used from the FFHacktics website and I want to do my best to give credit where it is due.

I want to specifically call out Xifanie, Elric, and Celdia for their help with some of my questions!

Thanks to Zozma for making the Beatrix sprite. (according to the FFhacktics website)
Thanks to Kuraudo Sutoraifu for making the Cloud Advent Children sprite. (according to the FFhacktics website)
Thanks to Wiz for digging out the WotL DK sprites and making the video I followed for adding unit palettes.

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Thanks to everyone who made and/or documented ASM hacks including:
Xifanie
  Soldier Office Upgrade hack
  Smart Encounters
  Incremental Jump Range
  move-find is player only
  Cross Skip (super speed text)
  Set title screen default to Continue
  Remove permanent brave alteration
  Remove permanent faith alteration
  Elemental Fix (v3) OIL fix / float takes increased wind dmg
  Remove forced slowdown for Math Skill
Pokeytax
  CT Save documentation
Razele
  Death Sentence - Ignore Cancel:Dead
  AI attacks transparent
  JP scroll glitch fix
  Special Characters can do propositions
  Soldier office can rename any units
  Secret Hunt ability isn't needed to enter Fur Shop
  Require sword - require weapons --- allow katana for sword skills
  Undead units ignore Phoenix Down
Glain
  Random Unit Gear based on story progression
  Random Unit Gear more selective
  Fix Reraise Graphic Width
  Disable paging on JP confirm menu
  Switch unit roster numbers in Formation (L1/R1)
  Equipment duplication glitch fixes
  Instant abilities flash red with insufficient MP
  Crits always deal bonus damage (even if just a tiny bit)
  Inherent RSM Limitation Hack (makes it so you can't equip supports which are innate i.e. chemist throw item)
  Save between battles after formation screen
  Unit bench hack
Pride
  Weapon Range and others Disable Movement
Choto
  No Zodiac Compatibility
nates1984
  Weapon XA Rewrite (weapon formula rewrites)
Emmy
  Documentation for Auto-Protect/Auto-Shell/Auto-Haste
FFTMaster
  Abandon multiplier change
dw6561
  Abandon multiplier change

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Thanks to everyone who made the easy-to-use tools to help mod FFT!
Xifanie
melonhead
Glain
Ganon
RavenOfRazgriz
Starbee
Paradox
TWoeMS
Mr 273
victoraldecoa

Thanks to all my testers for helping me polish the hack and fix issues!

Thanks to anyone else I may have missed!

So I've been banging my head on this for a little while and tried multiple things from multiple directions and still can't seem to make headway, so I must be doing something wrong or its a known issue.

Context
I've been working on a mod for a while now and a new bug that I hadn't seen before.
I slowly eliminated all of my patch content, Attack.OUT / TEST.OUT modifications, ASM hacks, FFTPatcher data, FFTactext data... and both individually and combined I can make a working PPF that doesn't bug out/hardlock. I was able to narrow it down to Shishi seemingly being the cause when using a PPF.

I've manually expanded a vanilla game image to create a PPF per Xif's wonderful tutorial here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7457.0 . I use the manually expanded game image as my Original File in PPF Studio and the Patched File is nothing more than the same vanilla game image file pre Xif expansion, only I opened it and restructured it via Shishi's for more sprite room.

So for my troubleshooting, when making a PPF I use...
Vanilla base image: manually expanded via HEX to match file size of patched image
Patched base image: vanilla image restructured using Shishi
The images are not modified in any other way.

Problem
For some reason, in pSX 1.13 (I haven't been able to replicate this in other emulators or even in pSX until recently), when any event loads with Worker 8, the game just says "Now Loading..." indefinitely. I can easily replicate this with any late-game save file by simply loading the Brave Story event "Steel ball found!" Alternatively if you go to the Nelveska Temple fight, after the Squad screen and the map name displays, the game just hardlocks at a black screen.

Note that if I open the Shishi expanded game image in pSX, the scenes will load and work properly.
However, regardless of which game image I use (shishi expanded or PPFed), I do see a number of errors in the psxfin console:

I have seen these errors before and they have typically been benign, but maybe I should be worried about them? For reference the true vanilla image does not show these errors during that particular scene.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of behavior? I'm at a loss for what I could be doing wrong. I've tried multiple vanilla game image bases in different "formats" (because I know it's all the same data, but i wanted to try) and can't seem to get a patch to not lock up the pSX emulator now. I even tried an older version of Shishi (483, currently using 492). I did a little searching on the forums, but couldn't find any results, but my search-fu might be lacking.

I hope this paints a clear enough picture. Any help or guidance is appreciated!

Hello,

I've recently been adding event edits to my long-term (going on 10 years on and off) PSX FFT mod and once I started to do that, I began to see some bugs creeping up with characters not saying text in the correct order, some battles ending by displaying the conditions, etc. These things I've been able to easily address with some minor edits.

I recently came across an issue where the first battle in chapter 4, Doguola Pass, was not properly advancing the story upon victory. You'd return to the map, the dot would still be orange/red, and if you tried to move away from it, it immediately sucked you back into the same story fight over and over. I resolved this by advancing the story variable and updating the color of the map dot, similar to 273 Yuguo Woods Victory:
//Story Progression variable
ZERO(x006E)
ADD(x006E,x002A) //Doguola Pass
ZERO(x028D)
ADD(x028D,x0001) //Make Doguola Pass green dot

My current issue is that this similar problem is happening for the Beowulf Goland Gauntlet. Upon winning the first battle, it takes you back to the map, the dot is still orange/red, but you can move away from it. Going back sends you to the first fight again.

I checked some other gauntlet battle victories, like Lionel1 and Ch3 Orbonne1, and noticed x0055 being consistently updated, but this variable isn't labeled on the wiki anywhere that I could see, so I'm not sure what it might be for.

What is the proper way I should advance the gauntlet fights? I checked Elric's Event Tutorial, but didn't see anything about gauntlet fights or triggering events after another event ends.

Any guidance or nudging in the right direction would be appreciated. I'm just worried I'm not properly setting a value/flag somewhere that should be set.

TLDR: I'm new to event editing and having issues with chain battles / event progression.

Thanks in advance

Cerabow

Hello all. I apologize if this is posted somewhere and I just failed at searching.

I've been stalking these forums over the past 5 years and been working on my own re-balance FFT hack throughout those 5 years. Every time I visit here I'm impressed with the crazy amounts of work and knowledge everyone has accumulated from FFT.

Throughout reading, I've occasionally come across mention of Xifanie's hack (not sure if its ASM or not) regarding 0% chance for random battles unless you set your destination as a random battle field, in which case it becomes 100%. I searched through the old ASM hack threads such as:
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=953.0

as well as the wiki a bit, and when using the search on the forums, the only thread I was able to find regarding it was here:

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8658.msg189625#msg189625

Rather than messaging Xifanie directly, trying to adhere to to the forum rules of posting something that could benefit everyone, I figured I'd make a thread as I'm sure a number of people would be interested in this.

Can someone point me in the direction of where this might be documented? While Xifanie may have heavily contributed to the hack, would I be better of searching for things related to Eternal's work or even Elric's?

Just to clarify, I know Razele has posted a "No Random Encounters" ASM hack here:
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=1785.0
however that is not what I'm looking for.

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this.

TLDR: Does anyone know where I can find information on the hack where you have 0% random battles unless you target a green dot, then its 100%?

--
Tangent: Thanks to Ashiel and Xifanie for posting about the fur shop in:
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10392.0
I was able to apply similar changes without issue. I also got rid of the slowness of "little money" and sped up all of those other text screens thanks to them motivating me to edit event information, which after figuring out my version of CDmage was wrong, was SO EASY.