Final Fantasy Hacktics

Nothing. The only thing that's touched the iso is shishi. No sprites have been changed either; all I did was hit yes when asked about restructuring.

I suppose something could be wacky with my test save? It works fine without the iso restructure though. I'll try a handful of different saves.


I looked further into the changing the final byte fix thing, and notably I'm not using PPF patches at all right now. I'll keep this whole thing in mind when making a patch to distribute, though.


EDIT: Different saves all have the same issue.

Are we certain this isn't just a bug in shishi? Worker 8 is the last sprite on the list (other than the weapon sprites), and it could be a bug related to that. Inaccurate emulators (epsxe and pSX) seem to load the event fine, so people might just not be noticing it normally. Furthermore, CD Mage claims an iso restructured by shishi is corrupted and can only seem to find a few files.

Didn't seem to work. pSX 1.13 spits out the same errors, and on the psp it continues to sit at now loading forever.

To confirm I'm doing the right thing:

1) I take a clean, unmodified iso.
2) Open it in Shishi (the one that came with the patcher suite .482).
3) Hit "Yes" to restructure the iso.
4) Close shishi.
5) Open the iso in a hex editor.
6) Change the very last byte from 00 to 01.
7) The iso should be fixed.

Update: I'm having a problem with Shishi which is actually preventing me from solving the sprite issue.

Using the "restructure iso" option when opening an iso in Shishi makes the first worker 8 event crash the game. I don't know why. On my pSX emulator it spits out some errors and continues on as normal, but on the PSP it simply sits at "Now Loading" forever.

Has anyone else experienced this? It seems strange that this would go unnoticed if it was shishi's fault, but it crashes every time with an iso that's completely untouched except for shishi.

If I can't fix this I can't use shishi. Period. So, an alternative way to access sprites 80 and above would be nice (in particular I need Serpentarius's sprite to be set through the patcher and not just through the monster setting).

I take it you never beat the game? That's the final boss's first form.

You could change a monster to use that graphic if you wanted, then capture it.

So, I was successfully able to apply the reaction overwrite fix, but it turns out it comes with a display error: Innate reaction abilities do not show up in battle on the predicted damage window. In other words, when you target someone with an ability and they have an innate reaction, you won't be able to see any reaction ability at all until they counter you in the face. This is really only a problem for monsters, which only have reactions set as innates.

I'm not posting this in the ASM request area since I already know how to fix it. However, I don't know where to place my hijack, as it will require additional code and not just a NOP.

Here's the relevant code (SCUS_942_21):

Quote0005b848: 10400002 beq r2,r0,0x0005b854      Branch if Ability is not a reaction
0005b84c: 00000000 nop
0005b850: a4830014 sh r3,0x0014(r4)      Store Ability as Unit's Reaction Ability

I need space to add another conditional. It will fix the problem entirely to store the ability to the reaction ability slot if and only if the reaction ability slot is currently empty. This should take at least 3 more lines of code though, and I can't fit that into the routine.

So, where do I put my new code? I know in BATTLE.BIN there's the kanji space, but I dunno about the SCUS file.


Oh and some other random questions, since I'm very much new at MIPS:
- How do I know which registers are safe to use? I can see which registers the routine I'm modifying uses, but do I need to trace even further back, or can I assume things are properly preserved in the stack?
- Do I need to do anything special for absolute addressing (subroutine calls, etc)? When hacking a PSP game I had to fill out a redirect table so absolute addresses would be properly updated to their locations in RAM when the game was loaded.

Fulfilled my own request (well actually most of the work was done by whoever put stuff on the wiki):


Gained JP Up innate all

BATTLE.BIN
Address: 1179a4
Change to 00000000

Gotta agree that that looks much better.

Looks like you've got a good amount of work in. Certainly not the most polished thing ever but a good proof of concept.

Keep it up.

Looked around for that; only found this which has the same asm hacks included as .482.

If .483 is stable and release worthy, the wiki and stickies should probably be updated.

Redownloaded it (482, the one linked in the important links thread) and looked thoroughly; didn't see it there. (I DID see most of the various other things you mentioned though.)

Good point. I ended up having to move Serpy to the regular non-monster space, so yeah moving those over the unused male squires is probably what I'll do.

Markin' that one as solved.

There might've been some riding involved off screen during and before chapter 1, if you catch my drift.

Thank the people who actually made the list. It's helped me a lot too.



Request of my own:
Gained JP Up innate all. Manually doing this in the patcher takes away one innate slot from every humanoid unit, which is a big deal for things like Dragoner, which have all 4 slots already taken up. Other methods (like reducing JP costs to do effectively the same thing) have side effects too. Modifying the JP gain formula to always have the 3/2 multiplier would be the cleanest way of doing things.

@Jumza

Yes, that will work. Thank you!

I don't think this will fix the calc/bard/dancer/mime thing, as I don't see a similar option for humanoid sprites, but it certainly helps my current problem.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that would turn them into actual Uribos, not things that just have the sprite of a Uribo.

Related to question 3: How do I force something to use a monster sprite?

I have several different monsters that I want to force to use the Uribo sprite (to avoid sprite limits, and as a joke), but I seem unable to actually set a unit to use it in the patcher. Setting them to use 8F just seems to pull random spritesheets out of the aether (usually humanoid). I tried overwriting one of the humanoid sprites in Shishi, but the Uribo seems to be larger than a regular spritesheet and the bottom part is cut off.

Any advice on how to force any arbitrary monster to use another monster's spritesheet?

Here's a list of all the formulas and some descriptions of them:

ffhacktics.com/wiki/formulas

Oooh, awesome. This also obviously brings in the possibility of having AI only units in your roster, which is interesting.

Can the "null/empty" item be given stat bonuses? Sure it'd be kinda weird to have +5 speed baseline for every unit but it'd effectively allow you to do what you want.

EDIT: My attempts seem to show this is impossible to do with just the patcher. Maybe an ASM hack can overcome any hardcoding of the first item slot.

Generally when people add new overpowered units to their roster, game lore purity isn't high on their list of priorities.