Freeing Up Room for Abilities

[The Damned]

I was wondering if there was someway to use the space of abilities like that otherwise non-Normal, like Items or Throwing (Star) Items or some of the lesser Jumps, that are located towards the end of FFTPatcher.

When it comes the ability page, I'm hesitant to get rid of anything, even the blank spaces right before Item section that just say they apparently "Crash The Game". Given my reference discovery that Items are currently not working in other classes how I want them to, I've decided to get rid of them and it would be useful if I could also use their ability space for new skills instead of only being able to use their "physical" Item space for new weapons/equipment.

TIA.

[Lydyn]

Not that I know of, I think doing that would require ASM hacking - whatever that is. Either way, chances are you'll have to play with abilities below Parasite. Just be warned, don't mess with the one directly above Potion - it's "Attack."

[The Damned]

Good to know about the Attack thing; bad to know about the need for ASM hacking.

I'm still weary about messing with those gaps even though they "say" they "only" crash the game.

Ugh.

[Zozma]

the only thing you would need to "asm" hack about the 9 skills below parasite is what kind of stance the character takes when using the skill. currently they resemble a draw out stance, just raising the arms and executing the skill.

they dont crash at all as long as you assign a working effect file. that was the only reason they crash in the first place. They are perfectly good slots.

also bombs have a skill that has 3 different versions just because of their sprite color difference. "small bomb" you could use just one if you really wanted to write over some skills. they take a weapon strike stance.

the skill just below the time mage spell "meteor" is also a free slot and takes a magic casting stance.

[The Damned]

Duly noted. Thanks Zozma.

Let's add up these spaces:

• Space below Meteor.
• The first instance of Seal, which is the flawed one that Celia and Lede never used in vanilla. The spot is otherwise fine as far as I can tell--I haven't done testing--and "fixing it"--I think the only flaw is animation--anyway would be pointless since you can just replace it with the other Seal that already works.
• Two instances of Small Bomb. I think the only "major" difference between the three was just so that the small bombs generated by the animation matched the type of Bomb using it, hence the red, blue, and black coloration specifications.
• An instance of Tentacle, probably. They use different animations, but I'm pretty sure it's not a huge difference.
• Grease Touch can go if you don't feel like changing its status since Oil is still not working for us at the moment. Same with third version of Bio that only adds Oil.
• Hell, you could probably condense all the Bios down to three spells. That would save seven spaces in and of itself.
• You can also get rid of one of the Blood Sucks since the only difference I've seen at the moment is that the human/Elmdor one adds Blood Suck at 100% and the Vampire Cat one adds Blood Suck at 25%. I'm not even sure why that is. I'm assuming it's something that we can't hack yet, though it may also be the fact that the latter has Separate Blood Suck originally. That's only thing I haven't played around with regards to Blood Suck yet (and yet I feel like I'm forgetting something).
• Finally, there are the 10 spaces below Parasite but before the blank space above Potion.

Basic math shows that's at least 15 spqces if you take the all eleven blanks, one of the Blood Sucks, the flawed Seal, and two of the Small Bombs away. If you add up everything, though, you get almost twice that amount with 24 spaces--the seven "wasted" Bio-related spaces, unchanged Greased Touch, and whichever Tentacle--being go to go.

I still want to be able to get rid of Items if necessary, but I guess this is good start.

*goes to mess around with formula 40*

[Zozma]

yeah the bio's are a waste, i consolidated them into the three green spells. the green ones only because that color makes the most sense.

i never new that that version of seal just didnt work at all?, tho the assassins are deadly enough without it, but i would love to see them get even deadlier.

also, if you dont want to asm hack, most monsters basic attack simply uses the same physical damage formula as attack and they use the weapon strike animation. you can get more sword skills out of that or whatever you prefer. (i had problems, however, with monster ai when changing their basic attack just to "Attack" found above "Potion"

[Lydyn]

The assassins use Seal ... I've had them use it on me before. It's not very often, that's true, but they do use it. Unless you're talking about something else, because the first instance of "Seal" is in the "Use Hand" skillset.

[Zozma]

for some reason its only a last resort for them, like if you're immune to death and stop.... oh wait, they had no hesitation to use it on a normal monster right away i took boco there once...

[The Damned]

Are we talking about 1.3 here, though? Because Voldemort7 fixed the fact that in vanilla they never used Seal even though they had it, hence why I called it a "flawed" version. I think it's because the animation for the first Seal is for some reason Sunken State's animation and the computer doesn't use Transparent, especially in vanilla.

As for the other things, I don't think that I'll have to get rid of regular monster attacks at the moment. Considering the type of changes that I want to take to my patch, it's far more likely that Zodiac monsters will be the one to go, so their abilities are first up on the chopping block for me.

Speaking of demonic abilities, Zozma, if you don't mind double-checking, can you relay to me which animations for Bio are the green ones?

[Zozma]

Bio
Bio
Bio
Bio 2
Bio 2
Bio 2
Bio 2
Bio 3
Bio 3
Bio 3

hmmm i might have switched the blues and reds around? i forget

[The Damned]

Oh, so they're all the first ones. That's rather convienent.

For more convienence, that's 0D4 Bio, 0D7 Bio 2, and 0DB Bio 3.

Duly noted Zozma. Thanks.

*finally gets around to playing with formula 40 after messing around with Squire*

[Lydyn]

Yes, I've seen them use it in Vanilla ... especially since I've never played v1.3 - it's just rare. Annoying as hell though. Might be because the AI is checked as "Cancel Status" and not "Add Status" making it occur less often, like Bad Breathe or All-Ultima and "Random Hits" (despite it doesn't hit randomly).

[The Damned]

Hunh. Weird. They never did it to me in vanilla, but I believe you, so....

So, I found the difference between the Blood Sucks: It is the Inflict Status Code.

Knowing me, this data is already around, but it would appear that Separate status makes ANYTHING attempt to add status at 25%, including the formula 38--I guess it makes since 100% of 25% is 25% and thus it wouldn't boost it up 100%.

Actually, there was another thing that separated them, which is what I kept forgetting to report in the other thread (where I felt it didn't really belong anyway): Elmdor Blood Suck ALWAYS has the message "Must live as a vampire!" conveyed with it, regardless of whether the status is actually added (like it is always is All Blood Suck's case) or not (like it isn't 75% of the time in Separate Blood Suck's case).

It may be part of the animation, now that I think about it actually....

Other than that, I think the only thing I've found out so far is that unnamed abilities don't glitch the game like I thought they would, but they WILL absorb each other if you have more than one, so I'm still not entirely sure about that since all my "Chemist" had was a modified Death Cold.

I suppose I should conduct experiments via that before I do anything else.

[LastingDawn]

Not quite... the only reason they would use Seal would be to "cure status" on one of their Allies and the AI knows better. So it's not that it has anything wrong with it, more so that the AI specifications were incorrect.

[The Damned]

Ah.

Speaking of Fear's restrictions, is only possible to use three Fear moves within a skillset? I ask because I was trying to test quite a few things out earlier on today, but kept getting slowed down by only three or four Fear spells popping up.

I originally thought it was because I trying to use Teta's "Magic" Job, but then I switched to Cloud's Limit and had the same problem.

Damn restrictions.

(Oh, and for the record, Blood Suck animation appears to have nothing to do with the "Must Live as A Vampire!" animation that appears.)

[Archael]

Yes, I've seen them use it in Vanilla ... especially since I've never played v1.3 - it's just rare. Annoying as hell though. Might be because the AI is checked as "Cancel Status" and not "Add Status" making it occur less often, like Bad Breathe or All-Ultima and "Random Hits" (despite it doesn't hit randomly).

You are mistaken...

Assassins simply cannot use Seal on the player in vanilla.

The AI flags prevent them from doing so.

You must have been playing a modified patch.

"Cancel Status" does not make it occur less often, and is totally unrelated to the function of "Random Hits".

"Random Hits" will prevent AI from spamming a skill every turn, yes, but "Cancel Status" is something else altogether.

All "Cancel Status" does is make the AI think that this particular Seal is for CURING the petrify status on allies. But since the ability isn't even flagged for use on allies, it effectively makes the AI never use it, ever.

Switching that flag to "Add Status" will let the AI correctly identify it as a skill that adds petrify to enemy units, and will let them use it.

"Random Hits" has nothing to do with this, it was simply a case of Square disabling the skill for them in vanilla.

[Lydyn]

Well, either my memory is faulty or I'm not mistaken. I still claim I remember them petrifying me though. The only modified patches I played so far are my own. Not like it matters anymore anyways ... as for getting back on topic (because arguing would get us nowhere ;P) I really don't know about the Fears.

What did you do with them exactly? Stuff more than 3 fear abilities into a skillset? And it slowed the game?

[Archael]

I'm not trying to argue, I'm pointing out facts of the way those functions work with the AI

[The Damned]

Well, either my memory is faulty or I'm not mistaken. I still claim I remember them petrifying me though. The only modified patches I played so far are my own.

It's possible you're confusing it with one of the Apandas' Petrifying Bios unless you're remembering either inside of Limberry or on top of Lionel.

What did you do with them exactly? Stuff more than 3 fear abilities into a skillset? And it slowed the game?

I was mostly dicking around with the less used status like Performing and Charging and Jump yesterday when it came to inflicting them since you can never do it in game--I used the Fear formula because they come prepackaged with 100% success and I was also curious about the Separate thing, which was the only thing that answered yesterday really. (It was only earlier today that I realized why what I was trying to do with formula 40 wouldn't work.)

As what kept happening, yes, I was trying to put more than three in a skillset, which I figured wouldn't be a problem since ALL Fear skill sets already have four skillsets.

However, whenever I would try to test them in game, even though I had learned the entire class (since Fear skills are naturally 0000), I could only access the top three skills in the class. It was dependent on the other of the skills too.

I'm not sure why that happens, unless you can only use three Fear skills and Seal for some reason (the one Fear skill that all Zodiac demons with Fear have IIRC) doesn't count towards that restriction.

[The Damned]

Ugh. I hate double posting, but since no one has answered my question in a fortnight, I think that I've discovered that all the Zodiac's Skill Set are capped at four moves for some reason.

That or Item is fucking me over from the grave.

Probably both.

I'll try and test more later tonight, but I really do need to do other things.

(I'll try and post my relevant notes next time I post.)