Final Fantasy Hacktics

Someone posted on GameFAQs complaining about the Luso battle at Zeklaus. Watching their playthroughs, I see that they're losing a speed tie (7 SP) to Luso and the Behemoths, who kill him before the player's turn. Luso gets Twistered (34% HP damage) by two King Behemoths and a Behemoth1 after he jumps in. The Dark Behemoth takes a turn but is out of range. The other two Behemoths don't get 100 CT.

In Vanilla, Behemoth1s get their 6th SP at level 19, while it seems that in Emergence, they get their 7th at level 18. Decreasing the level of the lv18 Behemoth1 will decrease the number of turn 1 Twisters by 1, allowing him to survive until speed-tied player units can act (unless he got Countered). The battle is around level 15 to 25, and at least in Vanilla, natural base SP becomes 8 at level 34.

Patches here. Pull request made.

Four hacks:

• Un-Truth uses PA instead of MA. (It's still magic damage.)
  
• Truth, Un-Truth, and Holy Bracelet always do max number of hits.
  
• Un-Truth treats Faith/Innocent as min/max instead of max/min. (Un-Truth normally deals full damage with Faith status.)
  
• Truth spells are affected by Faith. (Evil hack: jumps into the middle of Faith spell damage calculation.)

I recommend starting here and tracing the code by hand.

Here may be where it gets interesting. Note how it loads the elemental modification flags from the unit, rather than from gear. You'll need to find where the game writes to those flags.

My first thought is Linux permission errors, but unless you put the file in the folder in a weird way, it should have the proper permissions.

Does copying the original file (which you backed up, right?) to the folder work? If so, you may have made a mistake in patching the file.

Did you make sure to make PPSSPP save decrypted saves?

If you're still looking for an easier hack, you can add Enhance:Whatever and Innate:Faith to the magic guns.

Be aware that it'd make Equip Gun Wizards a strong option. To fix that, you can eliminate Equip Gun or add Innate:Silence, with the risk of overcomplicating the whole thing. (Magic Gun Chemist can't cast Time Magic? Why?)

Is magic gun damage really that important? It's reliable ranged damage for support jobs, not a powerful unevadeable attack for one-trick ponies (except Mustadio).

And it's unlikely that there will be such support in the future, due to the requirements for using mods.

Your particular issue, though, I might be able to help with. Check the ownership and permissions for the pushed file. It may be assigned to "root", making it impossible for the app to read the file. You want it to have the same permissions as other files in the same folder.

The Steal and Rend skills are at least somewhat hardcoded. Maybe they're also hardcoded in animation.

Innate reactions overrides set reactions. More info: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=1288.0

Which version of the FFTPatcher Suite are you using, and what version of FFT are you patching?

Default weapon formulas don't appear in FFTPatcher because they are hardcoded, and changing them requires ASM hacks.

Individual weapons' formulas can be changed in FFTPatcher. In fact, all vanilla Guns and Magic Guns don't use the default formulas.

I believe he's given those items through code that runs just for that battle, so nothing you do in Patcher can break that, short of changing his position in the unit list.

Quote from: Nyzer on November 22, 2018, 11:56:46 pmI'm... confused at this statement. Because applying ASM hacks is part of the latter, not the former.

Yes. I am suggesting that there should be an obvious resource for the former, and I also say that it will help the latter directly and indirectly.

QuoteAnd there's a topic near the top of the Tutorials board that says "how to patch an ISO with a ppf file", which as far as I've seen has typically just been the standard way of playing someone's finished mod as is. I guess it could be stickied, but (again) as far as I've seen, "how to PPF" is not a very frequent question around here anyway.

Most of the topics are by people who either are repeat posters, or who don't even realize that's the question they have, so that's a given.

I'd either ask for a sticky or ask that it be added near the TOP of the index.

Quote... Why does this matter? That post takes what, a literal minute to read? Someone who can't manage that much certainly won't be able to get as far as unzipping any files they download anyway.

Oh boy. Uh.

Designs need to consider the potential audiences and the need to reach them. The focus has been on modders and modder resources, but it is also important to make the process less painful for end-users so that the mods will be played.

As someone who interacts with less-techy FFT players, I notice a lot of them get intimidated by processes or the idea of those processes (and I feel that intimidation myself, when it's not an area I'm familiar with).

Imagine you're a newbie trying to read a book on programming and Chapter 1 is, "Turing Machines, Lambda Calculus, and the Infinite Oracle Model". You might fling that book as hard as you can and run the other way. (Or you would, if you knew a little about programming already.) First impressions matter. People EXPECT the stuff at the top is the easy part, or the part they need to know before the rest.

They're not going to take a minute to read it, because they're going to stop, close the tab, and try to find the RIGHT topic, because this topic is clearly not for them. Maybe that's not everyone, but that's going to be a lot of people. You call that incapability, and I call it a time-saving judgement which just happened to be wrong this time.

Nah, they don't have to.

I was thinking about how FFTPatcher lets you modify elemental affinities of jobs, and was surprised to realize I don't know any mods that revamp the whole elemental system and puts it front and center (Golden Sun comes to mind). Then I realized that someone could make an Avatar (The Last Airbender) mod.

I'm not gonna do it, of course. I've never seen that anime. But maybe posting this will help inspire a fan.

You're referring to this page? http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Storyline_Progression

I think you can populate the table by modifying the value at that address and seeing which red dots appear.

Use the program FFTorgASM, part of the FFTPatcher suite. You need to put the XML files you downloaded into the FFTPatcher folder which contains a bunch of XML files. It will apply selected changes to the selected ISO.

There are probably links to guides on using the patching programs to apply mods. If not... maybe there should be a Help subboard or a sticky just for people who want to play others' mods, rather than create their own. Having a dedicated (and, importantly, OBVIOUS) place for mod players, free of the clutter of info for mod-makers, might make things less intimidating, and it's useful for both makers and players.

It doesn't help that the Tutorial Index has ASM hacking as the second section, and puts ISO patching all the way at the bottom. :/

Nyzer, OP is probably modding PSP, since they said "Aim" instead of "Charge".

IIRC, there's a certain ability you can edit to add status infliction to all Aim+X, but... it adds status infliction to all Aim+X. However, that contradicts my understanding that Aim+X uses the weapon's status infliction properties.

I don't know if you can add element to a skill using the Aim formula. It might ignore the skill element and use the weapon element.

Quote from: Nyzer on October 31, 2018, 07:22:20 pmThat said, everything except having the CT work properly could be done just by burning some regular skill slots, if you so wished.

What do you mean by "having the CT work properly"?

There are a few unique properties of the Aim+X skillset type. I ought't've written it down somewhere, but I didn't. From memory:
- Charge time is not affected by Swiftness.
- Cannot move after Aim+X.
- BMG says moving while Aiming cancels it.


I assumed a fake would use the channeling pose (two hands up), rather than the Aiming pose (horse stance?). However, Cloud's Limit uses the Aiming pose, so it's something else controlling that. Maybe the Weapon Strike or Ignore Silence flag?

Simply jump to the other address. If your routine starts at 00abcdef, then do:
j 00abcdef
nop

If you use jal instead, you'll likely cause an infinite loop, since you modify r31 without first saving its previous value.

I can't tell you how to find free space. There are probably guides. Look for them.

It's the other way around. A formula is really a small program that runs upon skill use (and prediction). Whether Attack Up affects the damage depends on whether the formula's code decides to check for it.

Formula 4E (Fire Bracelet, etc.) calls "Truth/Formula 5E-5F Magical damage":
0018a440: 0c062259 jal 0x 00188964      Truth/Formula 5E-5F Magical damage

which calls "Magical Support/Status/Compat":
00188974: 0c0621d1 jal 0x00188744 Magical Support/Status/Compat

which calls functions adjusting for supports and Shell:
0018874c: 0c061881 jal 0x00186204 Magic Attack Up routine
00188750: 00000000 nop
00188754: 0c0618c7 jal 0x0018631c Magic Defense Up routine
00188758: 00000000 nop
0018875c: 0c061918 jal 0x00186460 Target's Status Affecting XA (Magical)

I believe you want to dummy out 0018c6b0 in this routine.
0018c6b0: 10400024 beq r2,r0,0x0018c744 Branch if attack didn't trigger poach

I'm guessing either the patch didn't go through, or the 1705 was AFTER he had gotten more JP, and he didn't have enough at generation.

The hardcoding is to a range of graphics ("M. Graphic" in FFTPatcher), not job IDs.
http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Dragon_Check

You can use an ASM hack to adjust the range, but it needs to stay consecutive if you want to keep the same number of ASM lines.

Or... I just set Templar's M. Graphic to 10 (hex), gave Ubersquire Dragon (since my Reis was still a Holy Dragon), and successfully cast Dragon Level Up (Quick) on Beowulf. "M. Graphic" must stand for Monster Graphic, because Beowulf still looked like a human to me. I searched on the wiki for 0x015e (the M.Graphic offset used in the check) and turned up nothing of significance, so it's PROBABLY safe to give a human job a monster graphic.

Don't forget to edit the Dragon abilities so that she can self-target. Except for Dragon Level Up. It might not be a good idea to give her self-targeting instant 100% Quick.