Final Fantasy Hacktics

Fixed a bit of the info. Videos play at 14.985 fps, and the xml was slightly wrong.

No and no. I haven't done any ASM hacking yet. I have an idea about the 2 swords Oil problem thanks to fdc, but it's just an idea. As for the 2nd effect, I'll just make it so Oil doesn't persist after death.

I didn't make that hack. He's blaming me for nothing. I've never cared about Zodiac monsters taking 999 from things like Life Drain.

I've replaced the opening video right after it shows the Squaresoft logo. Enjoy.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ylihn9

TUTORIAL TIME:

Disclaimer
This method is very messy, requires a fair bit of hard drive space, and is still currently being tested by me. Also requires use of cmd, so please be familiar with it. I will help people on IRC/this thread, but don't exoect a reply immediately. Most of the info is inside their manual, but can be annoying to understand.


Required programs:
https://kenai.com/projects/jpsxdec/pages/Home
A video encoder that will convert your video to bmp frames (I used Sony Vegas for this, I hear things like VirtualDub can do it as well)

NOTE: I am assuming everything is in the same folder as jpsxdec.

Step 1) Make your video and convert it to bmp frames. Please note that the video must be in 320x224. FFT plays videos at 14.985 frames/sec.

Step 2) You need to create an xml for the program to run. So open Notepad or whatever and type this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<str-replace version="0.2">
INSERT COMMANDS HERE
</str-replace>

The bolded line is where your commands go. Also please note that there is no </xml> at the end, if you put it in, you WILL get fatal errors. The commands look like this:

<replace frame="10">newframe10.bmp</replace>

This means you are replacing frame 10 with newframe10.bmp. That's right. You must replace each frame separately. In the fmv after the Square logo, the full video is 1011 frames, so you will have to 1011 of those commands. It's up to you how you want to create that xml. I used Excel and created it within 3 mins.

Step 3) Now, we should run this thing. Open cmd and go to the folder where jpsxdec is located. Type this in:

java -jar jpsxdec.jar -f FINALFANTASYTACTICS.IMG -x index

You can replace FINALFANTASYTACTICS.IMG with your iso file name. I'm just using the default name for simplicity. I'm not 100% sure what files are accepted, but they should all work. After this command, a file called index should be created in the folder.

Step 4) Open jpsxdec.exe and then click on open index. Choose your newly created index file. Look for the video you want to replace and find the index. Note that it shouldn't be the index of the .str, but the one inside it. For example, mine was 2593. I will be using this number from now on.

Step 5) Back in cmd, type:

java -jar jpsxdec.jar -x index -i 2593 -play

If it works, then you should be able to play the movie, and therefore your index number was correct. This is more to check if everything is correct.

Step 6) Type this:

java -jar jpsxdec.jar -x index -i 2593 -replaceframes video.xml

video.xml is just a placeholder, rename it to what the file name of your xml is. BEWARE THAT THIS PROGRAM WILL REPLACE YOUR FRAMES AUTOMATICALLY WITHOUT WARNING MAKE A BACKUP. If it's working, it should spit our a billion numbers. Just wait until it's done. For me, it took less than a minute to replace the entire FFT opening sequence of 1000 frames.

Step 7) Test the video! TESTING IS IMPORTANT


And that's it. Once again, any problems should be said here, so I can work out what is wrong.


This program says it can also turn midis into music for FFT, but it says it's buggy, so I haven't tried it yet.

What percentage hack?

Don't worry about Lancers and poles, I have a plan in the works for it. I'm mostly done with the patch, just need to add a few ASM tweaks, and some stuff for Monk/Ninja.

Obviously, you haven't seen the rage quit post generator before. It's 100% a joke. It's hardly a rant.

Here, have some fun

http://margalite.webatu.com/goodbye.html

Wait... you actually believed #ffh was useful for hacking? There was a reason why we all moved to a different channel when a major ASM hack or something was being worked on.

Also, you have to realise that those people who you are bitching about not working on a project or whatever don't actually have the knowledge to work on something, or an idea even. If it wasn't for me stealing Arena from PX/Aero, then I would be one of those people who hang around, play patches and do nothing else. Is that such a problem honestly?

Yes, I do the updates myself, unless there is something I need help on (spriting, some asm hacking).

Everyone must understand that simply due to the massive amount of items in this patch, some will obviously be neglected while others are used. This is dependent on what strategies are currently being run. So in my mind, these items are not bad, but rather they do not work in this current meta. If the meta shifted, you can definitely expect the equipment choices to shift as well.

That doesn't mean that there are some items that are just too good or vice versa. The hard part is trying to work out which ones are just bad and not just being neglected because of the current meta.

OK!!!!!!!! TIME TO OIL UP!

I can do pretty much anything stated. However here are some problems.

Both ideas if I just did really quick fixes WILL bring weak/absorb back into action. Just be prepared for that. Getting afflicted by Oil, and then having a teammate use HC on your face to heal 300+ like good oldschool Arena. As for changing the weakness multiplier to 1.5x, it would mean that we would have to remove all the half: element from all the absorbing items as well, else they will only heal 0.75x damage. This will also bring back the Weak/Absorb, although at 1.5x healing.

I'm completely out of touch with Arena now so I won't make any suggestions for balance, I'll just say what is/isn't mechanically possible.

On an unrelated note, here are a few ideas in the backburner if I have time to implement them for 139:

Movement: Initiative - start battle at 100 CT. Effectively, this means a double turn for fast units, or a turn to set up a nice Haste or something before they even get close enough to hit each other.
Defend: Adds 20 CT when you end your turn with Defend. Effectively, a unit using Defend would still get the CT bonus for not taking an Act action.

EDIT: I plan to start work on the massive update for 139 tomorrow. Should I just follow the thread Gaignun made?

Meanwhile, another unit decides to kill the sleeping and about to be Jumped on person anyway, making the Jump a turn waste.

Raise 2 isn't evadable. Innocent status will reduce hit rate though.

It should be fine. It just loads XA = WP instead of XA = MA. If we really wanted, we could make it shoot things like Grand Cross as well.

1) Not at present.
2) They will probably have the exact skillset that was outlined originally.
3) That should have been fixed ages ago.
4)There is a special routine where Mimes cannot mimic each other. But a Mime with a secondary is still too strong imo. The Lore spam team being touted in this thread is an example of new Mimes already looking too strong. It can be very easy to just keep the Mime back using Move = 0 and also Lore spam, while Mimicing it as well.

Well, if you want me to break them, I can.

Update:

Item attribute system is fully functional, with a few very minor display bugs in Item List (when you go Equip > List) regarding status stuff.
Fixed the Goblin portrait for Mime.
Decided that Mimes will not have a secondary even though they can equip one. Will cause too many balance issues there.
Druid stats are currently:
Male

HP - 144
MP - 72
PA - 8
MA - 8
Speed  - 8

Female

HP - 135
MP - 77
PA - 6
MA - 10
Speed - 8

I will try them out with 4 Move initially. Move -1 will be moved to Druid to compensate slightly. Jump will also be 4. Evasion will be 15%. They will have all of Scholars old Equips, except clothes.

I am liking the idea of making the Lores dual element if they become too strong with the Mime buffs. So those may come up soonish.

The problem is the AI doesn't like statii like Protect/Shell/Reflect.

That one is easily explainable reinoe. Mime will fail since the Mime was facing the edge of the map, and so will try to target a wave fist off the map. The sing/dance ones are the problem though.

Ok, the Mime at least did an animation, which means that the game knows it should be doing something, but then skips the Mimic action. I'll give a shot at fixing it.

I have no idea what I'm doing right now, and giving it up as a bad job until we have more information when a Mimic will fail.