Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hey homies, wasn't sure where to put this exactly, hope this is the right place.

So I've known for a while that there was some tension between Arch on the 1.3 ID forums and this site, but can we let that go already?  I'm not interested in hearing old war stories about the reasons behind this schism, valid as they may be, I just mentioned it because I was going to post in the New Projects Section about a project that I'm working on that has some basis in 1.3's changes, and included a link to the ID site where I have a thread (which Arch hasn't been seen around for ages, by the way).  Anyway, as some of you well know, this site changes any mention of "Inzane Difficulty" to "insanely derpy," including in any links. 

Humorous though that may be, I can't help but finding it rather unprofessional - not that we as modders/gamers are paid "professionals" that necessarily need to conform to a standard of impeccable behavior, but for the reason that it seems a little on the medieval side - I find it overly dramatic and it creates a needless divide between two communities with great members that share an appreciation for FFT.  Whatever may be said about Arch, 1.3, which included the work of Philsov and others, was a dang good mod for its time and is what rekindled my interest in FFT.  So can't we all channel our inner hippies, kiss and make up, and recognize the validity of someone else's work, whatever his personal characteristics may have been?  Or if that's not good enough, make up for the sake of the 1.3 forum, which is still semi-active (although less so in the summer months, I've noted)?  Like two cities, these two forums can grow stronger through positive exchange and interaction, or be left to stagnate in their isolation. I say let's "not make war on dead men". But what are y'all gonna do?

works for me.  Gracias!

Well, I've certainly learned a lot today...perhaps more than I bargained for.  In my wilder days  I might have said sharing is caring, and that just because there's a goalie...but I'll settle for sending some grateful vibes that Plato would be proud of.   

Anyway, one final question - the info on how to input status was very useful, but I'm a little unsure of how to make the other options work.  The weapon options and numerical options seem pretty intuitive, e.g. it only works if PA is at a certain level, but I'm wondering if y'all could guide me briefly through how some of the other options work.  Specifically I'm looking to make an ability (joust) that only works when the user is on a mount, but I can't figure out a setup that works.   Mount and flagged mount don't seem to do anything.

Xifanie, you're a beautiful person.  Let's take a long walk on the beach sometime - and I'll let you be in my dream if you let me be in yours. 

Ok, I see those options now, and the hex it generates. I'm definitely a newbie with spreadsheets though - I find hexing a lot more intuitive because there's no behind-the-scenes magic, and in this case I'm not sure where to paste it - just pasting the text in the xml tab to the specified offsets makes FFT not work, but saving the data in the xml tab and putting it in the FFTorgAsm folder doesn't get it recognized. So...how do you actually apply the patch for the most recent spreadsheet? Or if your new one will be more user-friendly I might take a look at it.

Hmm, this looks promising. However I'm confused as to where conditions other than items equipped come into play - that part is as simple as 0s or 1s.  Do you know how/where I would specify a status?  I assume it would be under the Conditions/Value 1 area, but I really have no idea what type of input it's looking for.

Hey homies, appreciate the help I've gotten here so far.  A few more questions for now...

How do you make an ability that only works when the user is critical?  One example is fft 1.3's defy pain, but I want to make an offensive ability that is only available when critical.

Also, how do you make abilities that only work on units with certain statii? e.g. to KO a sleeping/don't move/stopped unit but nobody else?  An example is 1.3's Damnation (KO's a unit with reraise), but the setup in patcher is less than intuitive.  On a similar vein, I notice there are abilities that only affect certain classes, such as Reis's Dragon abilities or seal evil - can more be made like these, for example an ability that doubles damage to undead classes or only works on specific monster types?

Danke,

Well, that answers my main question.  Alright, guess I'd better ask about abilities then: which sets/groups of them are glitchy, and what can I do about it?  I know that stuff like charge, jump and geomancy are hardcoded, but not sure what can be changed about it.  I've also noticed that songs/dances seem to be pretty hardcoded, i.e. I can't really change anything about stuff like battle song (or dupe it) regarding what its effects are.

Hey y'all,
So I'm trying to maximize new content in a mod I'm making, but things are not always as they seem with regards to what is actually available for use.  For example, I edited skillset 80 (80-9A are all empty and nameless) - it works fine to hold skills, but the name/text I applied to it via patcher doesn't show up, so I figure it's unusable textwise.  Other examples I've noticed are the 5C-5E ??? slots in Shishi - I've actually gotten the first one (or two?) to work, but the third one seems unusable.  Anyways, is there some list of the unusable/glitchy jobs/skillsets/spritesheet slots that I should be aware of to minimize needless effort?

(Also, I notice that jobs 9C - 9F in patcher are empty, although there's no corresponding text boxes for them in tactext - is there a reasonable way to link text to them?)

Thanks

Fantastic! It works just as I'd hoped.  And switching the palettes back to zero is comparatively nothing, but thanks for the heads up.   

Hola all,
Pregunta - so I've been making new spritesheets and palettes and trying to have units of the same job class appear with several possible palettes (much like generics have different colors for friends and foes/different teams), but they always have the same palette. I know there's a section in FFTpatcher for palette in ENTD, but it doesn't seem to work.  Any insights?

Hey y'all, making some abilities for my mod, and I was wondering how several things can be accomplished:
-Make a damage ability that can only be used in critical, similar to fft 1.3's defy ability, but with offensive capabilities
-Make an ability that targets the caster and enemies, but not other allies, and/or KO's the caster only while dealing damage
to enemies
-I want to make an ability with the grand cross graphic that removes debuffs from allies, but I haven't been able to get it working - is the graphic hardcoded in such a way that this doesn't work?
-Make an ability that damages or KOs only units with a certaim status (e.g sleep)

I'm also experimenting with having one enemy unit crystallized/treasured at the beginning of battles in a hard-to-reach area -(by having that job class have innate crystal/treasure). The crystal works decently, but the rotation is wonky, and the treasure chest looks like a discolored chicken.  I'll experiment with scrapping the sprite for that unit, but was wondering if anyone had insight into this
Thanks

Hey, thanks for giving me something to start with.  I'm a little uncertain what you mean by "change stat used here" though.
Anyway, I applied this hack as it is and here's what happened: I didn't notice any change in ct for my units, although I noticed that enemy generic priests could instantly cast full life. I used a savegame, so I don't know if that would have stopped it from affecting my units vs randomly generated enemies.  It's interesting.

Hey y'all,
I'm looking at dealing with the relationship between spell ct and character speed by having spell ct decrease dynamically throughout the game as character speed increases. Does anyone have any insight on how to accomplish this, or where to begin?
Thanks

Perfect, thank you!

So for a mod I'm making, I'm editing weapon categories and converting some into others (e.g. rods into swords, bags into spears, etc) as per the guide here entitled "Converting Weapon Categories".  The problem is the actual attacking sprite only vaguely resembles the sprite/palette that I change the item to, so that the colors are off and sometimes even the type is wrong (for example, a rod changed into a katana has a straight sword sprite).  How can I fix this?
Thanks

Hey, so I'm trying to create a new ability in FFTpatcher that uses the swordskill formula that damages and breaks a piece of equipment, but when I clone the skill, the clone invariably has a 0% chance of working in all situations.  Anybody know what's up?

Awesome, thanks for the responses.  Looks like I've got a little more research to do.

QuoteYou stated you've seen Jot5, so how do you not know the answer to this?

Good question. We all know that adding new content and repurposing existing content are very different things.  JoT5 modified the order of existing battles/scenes (so it seems).  My intent is to keep all the existing vanilla battles, while adding extra plot/optional battles.  I did see the "mark" battle with the frogs on the ship, but I don't know that that wasn't a repurposed plot/cutscene/unlockable battle from vanilla.

QuoteYes.  As a point of reference, vanilla has 55 scripted story battles, and Monster Tactics has 75 as of the latest update.  They aren't totally new locations (the dot on the map has to exist in vanilla to my knowledge), but usually appear by making for example, Goug 1 and Goug 2 in sequence on 2 different Goug maps.

Yes, I noticed that most of the cutscenes were made into battles.  Not a bad idea, although I'll use that sparingly, if at all.  My intent is to do as much as I can without eating cutscenes or story battles.

QuoteGood luck with this.  This is a problem of superfluous checks for gender in code related to equipped items.  For example, code will say "branch if unit is a monster" and have a 2nd check later on "branch if unit is naked" (why is the first check needed if the 2nd exists?)  Anyway I managed to find at least 12 of these and it was still not enough, which means there's more lurking in undocumented code somewhere.

I'll look into this more.  I found by hex editing that there's a single value that controls whether a unit makes a monster death noise, equips weapons, etc, but there was a good bit of (seemingly) superfluous hex afterwards that I couldn't figure out the purpose of. 

Hey friends, name's Ansehelm.

I'm working on a modding the game in a way that adds units/graphics and mostly relies on FFTPatcher changes, but I do a little bit of hex editing and will employ some of the things that are possible (and realistically achievable without herculean effort) through ASM hacking...So I have a few questions regarding what is possible and how it can be done.  I've looked over quite a few ASM threads and some tutorials, but there isn't exactly a comprehensive unified list of what has been done so far.

1.  I'm trying to add a poachable monster, without replacing any existing monsters.  Is there a way to do that and assign items?

2.  I'm trying to make more than one monster (but not all of them) mountable.  The hacks I've seen allow either 1 more mountable monster, or all mountable monsters.  Is there some happy medium whereby I could do just 2-3?

3.  I want to have monsters that can equip weapons but still have monster death noises. 

4.  Is it possible to add new battles at new locations on the map, or to add new story battles?

5.  (Related) Is it possible to add more levels to the Deep Dungeon, or to add another unlockable DD style location?

6.  I've seen battles in JoT5 begin with units mounted on chocobos - how do I do this?

7.  Is it possible to add battles on the unused maps in the game, or to import WOTL maps?

8.  I know that effect animations can be modified out of game, but is it possible to switch palettes for an animation (without having to replace it), such that I could have, say, a yellow stasis sword (while keeping the original blue available)?

9. Can a unit be knocked back 3 squares with a single attack?

Thanks in advance