Final Fantasy Hacktics

Okay. So I've been slowly working on a hack of FFTA2 for years now. I don't have much left that I want to do. In play-testing, one thing that bugs me is opportunity commands. With the exception of Flurry or Fleet of Foot; they usually aren't worth it but you've got to do it for your Sequencer. I'd at least want to convert Battle Shout to Critical Up or something more interesting than Resilience Up.

Unfortunately, I'm not much of a coder. I'm just using tools found here and I don't see these attacks listed anywhere. Does anyone know how to access these with existing tools?

Editing the values there won't change current party members in a saved game. This just changes which characters are part of the recruitment event when it happens.

Also note that those characters are named on the Nightmare module list by their original class. This is just a helpful reference for the Nightmare user. You change their actual starting class via the relevant data field for it.

There may be limits as to what can be changed. I changed up the starting party for my hack to include a Fencer and a White Monk, so I know that works. This list also contains the generic recruits that you can pick up through other normal recruiting events. I went through and tried to set it up so that generic recruits will have reasonable equipment and at least most of the requisite abilities to be their starting class. I haven't tested all of those changes but as you probably know, comprehensive play-testing for a game this size can be a challenge.

Use the Recruitable Characters module. Looking at the list, between 0x00 Luso and 0x06 Adelle, you'll see 0x01 Black Mage, 0x02 White Mage, 0x03 Warrior, 0x04 Archer, and 0x05 Thief. This is your starting team.

I edited the starting team in my hack using the Nightmare Modules. With the main character, Adelle, early human recruits, and the eventual acquisition of a freshly revived dual-wielding paladin; I always felt like I had one too many a Hume. So I swapped the initial generic Hume for a Fencer.

I haven't tried starting with a Gria. Besides looking cool, their movement type and ability to score knock-back kills from height are welcome as early as possible. The problem is that their class set is relatively small and unlocked via later-game missions. It'd be very easy to hit a wall with growth disparity if the player starts with one. So it becomes a question of what you can do to mitigate that and keep the race spicy before Fluorgis.

(My project is close to completion. I wanted to play-test all the missions before releasing it and I still have a little way to go.)

Quote from: chocolatemoose on July 08, 2020, 11:19:08 pmWhy is it not fun? I'd say that the vanilla game is too biased in favor of physical and against magick. Restricting heavy armor-wearing jobs' move and making light armor-wearing jobs into glass cannons seems like a good way to introduce more balance.

A main complaint in this game is that it can be slow to play. Reducing movement effectively means increasing the number of turns required for strictly melee characters to accomplish things in battle. Increasing the required turns increases the required time to complete a mission.

The other issue I was getting at is the question over which units are strictly melee units. The "favor of physical against magick" you mentioned includes physical ranged attacks without cost like Air Render, Aura Blast, Sonic Boom, etc. If these are still on the table, who and how are you really handicapping with those movement restrictions?

The point is, restricting movement restricts play and there needs to be a very good reason to do it. That reason needs to be explained comprehensively and in context with other features of combat.

I'm over 90% done with my hack. My "final playtest" has now crossed the 250 mission mark. Between my own work and following what others have done, here are two notes:

1. Heavily restricted movement isn't fun. It's even worse on a melee character. It just makes them hard to use. You've got to consider the trade-off. Importantly, why are you doing it and how does it compare to what you want to balance? Also consider which melee characters have access to ranged attacks and the degree to which designations like "melee unit" fully apply.

2. Forgive me for forgetting who it was but someone else tried assigning MP costs to everything. An important result was that Turbo MP became ridiculously powerful.

I didn't get the message as a result of cheat codes. Consider my initial post. In the first case, I got the Teddy Bear Error Message by "successfully" breaking or stealing from an empty slot. This was a byproduct of trying to create new skills that would break or steal things. In the second case, I got it by having Sticky Fingers somehow trigger off Magick Frenzy, meaning that there was no thrown item to collect. That seems to be an inherent glitch that just doesn't come up often due to the rarity of both Magick Frenzy and Sticky Fingers in the normal game. (I haven't tested it.)


I'm guessing that you did something similar to Case 1 by forcing 100% accuracy with cheat codes.

I was a big fan of this game back in the day. My friends and I all had hard copies and took wonderful advantage of the VS mode. We really played the heck out this game. I fondly remember what I loved but I also remember some things that I wished were different. It was a popular topic of discussion during matches. So being terribly ill and stuck in bed, I decided to look up utilities for a hack. It looks like this is it!

I rebalanced a lot of things so far. However, I want to change the damage output of some abilities. I also want to change the effect of Swallow's Daze and maybe add effects to other skills like Pelting Fury. Is this all tied to the animation? Is there an easy way to change it? 

Thanks for checking that. It was funny to see the sand king moved way up the bank. Do any issues occur after the enemy has been moved? For instance, can the enemy still use all of their skills without problems? Are there any problems with certain skills targeting or affecting the enemy in their new location? In one of the videos, it looked like the new enemy location overlapped another character. Are there any issues with that?

One thing I've learned from modding FFTA2 is that glitches can occur whenever particular graphics are called for and don't exist. (For instance, a Hume besides Vaan using a rapier.) Creating unusual circumstances can cause problems too. Draw-In was in a category of spells I didn't consider for normal use because it involves moving an enemy unit. I'm very curious to know if it causes glitches against large-sized or fixed-position boss-type enemies like the big birds, big plant monsters that spit malboros, or the sand king who actually uses it.

I've been a bit busy with another project but as you play-test your mod here, would you mind testing out Draw-In under different conditions and make sure there are no bugs for player use?

I really like some of what I see here. Giving the main hero that flame attack was cool. The convenience should make it a staple. Giving the Thief Shadow Stick feels right and adds some helpful diversity to the normal thieving skills. I hadn't realized that normal characters could use Draw In! That actually looked great. You've just inspired me to explore that as a Blue Magick skill in my mod.

I'd second the request for a change log, or at least the class and skill trees.

Here is the image as an attachment.

As you test changes, have you ever gotten the Teddy Bear error message? It brings up a box above the character with a teddy bear and an exclamation point. So far, I've gotten them to come up in two different ways:

1. Try to break or steal something that isn't there. Normal game abilities use a check to see if the target is holding. If you bypass or fail to have this check, you'll end up seeing the Teddy Bear error message when the ability "successfully" targets the empty slot.

2. This one is a little strange and I haven't tested it. I gave an enemy Seer Magick Frenzy with Fira, Blizzara, and Thundara. In the test battle, my characters with Sticky Fingers dodged the spell portion using the Evade Magick animation, got hit by the physical attack, and then displayed the Teddy Bear error message for each character that dodged the spell.

I'll try to test out the second cause when I get a chance. In the meantime, has anyone else encountered this? Does anyone know more about it?

I've been working on a hack for quite a while and this is one of the first things I ran into. Here is a note I wrote myself on possible equip additions way back then. (I hope this is accurate.) BTW, Vaan can use a Rapier but can't Dual Wield with it. Also note that not all weapon effects work when used on a weapon that is dual wielded and placed in the second slot. Anyway:

You cannot do something if the animation doesn't exist. It will go to check it and subsequently freeze the game.

Note that:

- Humes can't use rapiers, spears, or cannons!
- Humes CAN use maces, guns.

- Bangaa can't use bows or guns!
- Bangaa CAN use rapiers, instruments, knives, maces.

- Moogles CAN use rapiers and spears

- Vierra can't use cannons.
- Vierra CAN use knives, swords, sabers, spears, fists, guns, and knightswords!

- Nu Mou can't use swords, bows, guns, sabers, rapiers, or knives!
- Nu Mou CAN use fists and cannons.

BTW, there is another kind of weapon that exists in the game memory but was never used. (Grenades?) I think it was intended for a class that never happened. I don't know how to access them or if they are usable.

This looks really cool. I've been a fan of both the Dragon Quest Monsters and the Final Fantasy Tactics games since they first began. I've always wanted a Dragon Quest Tactics or a Final Fantasy Monsters. This might be the closest I ever get to scratching that itch. 

I hope you'll continue to develop this hack. I need to stay focused on the FFTA2 hack I've been developing but maybe I'll play this to celebrate once I'm done.

BTW, here are more notes:

Changing all the enemies to another class did not help.

Setting the hidden seventh enemy's faction to 0 caused him to exist in battle but overlaid on another enemy... that seemed bad, and it didn't help.

The "unknown bytes 0D to 06" in the formation editor seem to affect the enemy's starting position. In this case, changing the seventh enemy from 00000000000000FF to 00000000080200FF puts that enemy on the map normally.

I'm too much in the dark to start messing around with all the other unknown bytes. I'm going to leave a save at the beginning of this battle and move past it. So long as I get a few guys dispatched and don't check enemy stats during the fight, it seems fine.

After several more attempts, I've had the deployment problem start when scrolling left through my character list before deploying a unit. I've also had it happen such that I can't get a unit to actually deploy. When this happens, it looks like a character has deployed but it still says zero and deploying another one just causes the currently displayed one to disappear. Again, this is only happening against the undead formations at "A Plea for Help" and "Aiding the Serpent" as far as I can tell.

I still swear that this happened to me on an unaltered cartridge once upon a time. (I can't be sure but it feels like a real memory.) I really hope someone who has even a remote idea of what is happening here reads this and replies.

I am play-testing some changes and ran into a problem in the mission "A Plea for Help". It is enemy formation C5, which includes a Wraith and some Ghosts. When deploying characters to start the mission, there is an issue with deploying characters but only if I've already checked the enemy status screens. As I add a character, it occasionally cancels ones that I added before it. This means I have to start the mission with just a few units. I also can get a blank frozen screen glitch when checking enemy status screens once the battle begins.


I want to say that I encountered this on the cartridge back in the day but I'm not sure. I know it happened on a previous play-test with fewer alterations, but in a different mission that also involved undead enemies. (Curiously, I have encountered an eerily similar type of repeatable glitch in the PS4 release of Disgaea Complete when scrolling through the enemy lists in Item World. I'm the kind of guy who always looks over the enemies to check for good steals, etc. The possibility of the same king of glitch occurring in two similar games on different platforms is very interesting.) I'm guessing it is a problem with the enemy list or something.

The last time this happened on my rom-hacking exploration, the enemy formation editor had not been released. Since this is the first time it has happened on this play-test, I checked the editor. I confirmed that this is Formation C5. I notice that there are seven enemy units in the formation but only six appear at the beginning of the battle. Could there be an issue with enemies waiting to enter battle, or perhaps with the mechanism by which undead get uniquely removed?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I don't want to advance until I get this figured out and hopefully fixed.

Hi. I recently finished making my alterations to jobs, skills, and equipment. I am now play-testing those changes and editing the enemy formations as I go. The only problem is that I don't know which formation number goes with which mission. Digging through the formation list and checking individual units for a match is remarkably tedious. Does anyone have a list?

(For instance, "Now That's a Fire!" uses Enemy Formation 7, "Green Dominion" uses 2A, etc.)

Hi. I've been using this editor for a while and I've been very happy. I finished going over abilities, equipment, etc. Then I tried to change some of the... less than stellar random name choices. I see that I wasn't the first to discover that this doesn't actually save (only after spending a few hours editing the list, of course). Is there a more recent version of the editor that allows changing of the random name bank?

So I skipped that for now. I started play-testing the above changes and working on enemy formations as I go. The enemy formation editor is great! I've only got one issue so far. Is there a list that corresponds mission name to formation number? For instance, the first few story battles are right up front but I've had to hunt for stuff like Green Dominion.