I am planning to completely overhaul the WOTL for psp entirely.
I have plans to change the story, if possible, and the cutscenes as well. (Like when ramza uses that blade of grass as a whistle, or when we see the flower girl)
So if its possible how is it done?
First suggestion: don't use WotL. You won't get any work done on something that ambitious unless you work from the PSX version instead.
Now that we're not working off WotL, it is very possible. We have many guides for accomplishing all of the above in the Tutorials and Learning (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?board=43.0) section.
I never really figured out how to mod or patch the psx version successfully on my console. Do I need to jailbreak the console or can I still use my psp?
Any console will need to be modded to play hacks, PSP or otherwise. But yes, as long as the ASM hacks are console-friendly, you can play the PSX version with mods on PSP.
Why is the WOTL version harder to mod than psx? Whats different?
Modding PSX FFT is like changing the oil and spark plugs on your car. Modding WotL is more like pulling the engine, dropping the transmission, and replacing the clutch, all while on shrooms and half a bottle of absinthe. You're gonna be frustrated at what you can't accomplish, you're gonna break things, and nobody is gonna help you put it back together unless you're willing to pay a professional to sit back and do it for you, and they're gonna charge a high price because they don't want to touch it.
PSX FFT is well-documented with a plethora of useful ready-to-use tools and hacks and spreadsheets. WotL has a couple tools you can use without being too painful, but many things are undocumented, many things you can do on PSX cannot be done yet (and probably never will), and hacking it from the lowest level is a dangerous thing, because it runs on a very volatile emulation layer inside of another emulation layer. It's a mess.
I'm liking the automotive analogies. (I work as an auto mechanic for a living) I modded and patched WOTL before, but as you said I was limited. Ill try to tinker with the psx version. I just have to figure out how ecactly to utilize it through psp. Ill look into a psx emulator for it. Thanks for the warning about wotl
Ha, that's awesome!
And PSP firmware has a built-in emulator referred to as POPS, which chooses the HLE profile based on the SCUS/SLUS code of the game. It's slightly less volatile than WotL on its own, but not as easygoing as an emulator on PC, or even playing on a live PlayStation. But I've played through FFT on it - with certain mods, even - just fine.
Are you saying the psp will play a psx iso without me having to add an emulator?
Correct. But just as you need custom firmware to play a modded WotL, you will still need custom firmware to play modded FFT. But PSP has the innate ability to play PSX games in the form of eboots, created from programs like PSX2PSP (http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/playstation/psp-homebrew/psx2psp-v142-convert-psx-games-to-psp/).
Ill have to wait for a new battery for my psp before I can run any tests. One last question though. In my remodel of the game, im planning on adding (or changing) unique characters, including campaign enemies.
I had thought of a boss battle, in which he has a member of your party hostage, you must defeat him in 3 or 4 turns or your member crystallizes and is immediately powered up.
I also wanted to create a new class (or rewrite one) where the skillset is designed to "latch" onto another character like a parasite, characters affected lose a turn and I figure HP adjustments (add or subtract for friendlies or enemies) would come into play. But it would require the attack animations to change. So my question on that part is that too ambitious or is that doable?
I don't know about that second thing, but that boss battle design is very possible (and I highly recommend using PSX as well, especially for stuff like that!).
Feel free to ask for help when learning to do stuff like that :)
Not sure what you mean about the attack animations changing. How so? The rest of it is certainly doable, though.
Also, for testing purposes, you really will want to use a PC/Mac/Linux/Android/not-PSP PlayStation emulator. Creating eboots for PSP is slow, copying them to the memstick is slow, and then you might try to run the eboot just to have it crash because of some unforeseen error. It's cool to have 'working on PSP' as a goal, especially if that's what you prefer to play on, but it's veeeeeery slow for testing purposes. And you most definitely will want to test your changes often.
I think a pc emulator would be quickest.
And to clarify what I meant with "latching" characters, think of the attacking character being locked in the attack sprite while the attacked character is locked in the hit sprite. So they stay in these poses pretty much. (Untill one is hit by someone else or the countdown is completed)
I also wanted to clarify the "boss" as mentioned.
I was going to use a custom sprite for this one. Think of a villainous character using, say, agrias as a human shield. This is one character as far as the game is concerned, but the sprite gives the illusion of two people in one space. There is a countdown here, if it hits 0, agrias is gone for good. But if you can KO him before then, she joins as a playable character. Thata the idea, anyway.
This is one of those times where I have to say it sounds plausible enough, but I don't know how to accomplish it. Everything outside of locking the character animations is quite feasible, but the locked animations would take more ingenuity. I posed the question to Xifanie, but she's not exactly all that awake and coherent at the moment.
Greetings. Im having some trouble with the PC emulator I picked up in the tools section.
Its asking for a BIOS file, but I can't seem to find a legit copy anywhere online, do any of you have a legit source?
We cannot legally provide a link to a BIOS image, but you what you want will either be named SCPH1001.BIN.bin or more simply SCPH1001.BIN and will be 512 kilobytes uncompressed. The top results on Google should be assumed to be safe unless you have a slanted Google account, which should hopefully not be the case.
Also, while PCSX-R has an emulated BIOS (therefore does not require a legit BIOS image), the RNG in FFT does not behave as it should with this BIOS. It's an almost negligible difference, but may prove of some import with just the right ASM hack coming into play.
I finally found a legit BIOS, but I'm still receiving the same error message.
it reads: "the program can't start because d3dx9_29.dll is missing. try reinstalling the program to fix this problem."
again, this is the same program I found in the tools section. Perhaps the issue is with WIN10 compatibility?
I don't know. I'm sorry. tech support isn't really your job. I feel like I'm off to a really bad start in this. :?
No worries :) I bet a lot of us had trouble when we first started out trying to get our emulators to work. I know I sure did.
Anyway, if it's shooting errors at you that say 'X file is missing' your best bet is googling it (as you did with the BIOS). If not, you can try other emulators (though people here tend to use psx) and just put the BIOS file that you got in with that one.
Well, tech support used to be my job, and it was the most fulfilling job I ever had, so I don't mind.
The program doesn't actually come with the required DirectX 9 dlls, despite its dependency on them. I haven't yet upgraded to Windows 10 (though I do plan to once I finally put this SSD over here in my laptop), but I'm surprised it doesn't have DirectX 9 support out of the box. Seems to be a common problem with DX runtime not installing 9.0c's files in Windows 10, with conflicting reports as to how to solve the problem. Microsoft's official solution to the issue is here (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=35) though, so we'll try that first.
I had considered that. But I dont know if file x belongs with the emulator or in a system directory.
I had tried other emulators beforehand, and they seemed really complicated to set up.
Speaking from prior experience, it can actually either be in the appropriate Windows system directory, or in the same location as the emulator's .exe - I've had to do the latter with video drivers because I'm an AMD/ATi whore, and nobody writes programs to play nice with AMD/ATi, and AMD/ATi can't write proper video drivers to save their lives, so I had to keep a different set of drivers for 4 different programs in order for them to even work. Same principle works for all dlls, though; the executable will either look for it to be installed, or be in the same directory as itself for portability purposes. You can get the appropriate files from sites like dll-files.com (http://www.dll-files.com), just make sure to say no to any offers and installers.
Update: I got the emu to work. I started breaking down the iso for mods and I have a couple of questions.
1. In the text editor, where do you find the in-battle dialogue? Ive found how to change names mostly.
2. Is there a way I can get someone to animate a custom sprite? Or is there a better program to use other than mspaint at least?
Quote from: DERIDEX120 on December 13, 2015, 10:53:27 pm
1. In the text editor, where do you find the in-battle dialogue? Ive found how to change names mostly.
2. Is there a way I can get someone to animate a custom sprite? Or is there a better program to use other than mspaint at least?
1. If you mean like events that's a whole other thing than FFTacText, you'll need to check out the event editing section!
2. Graphics Gale and Gimp are often recommended. It's still a buttload of work though.
When it comes to sprites, I swear by Photoshop until it comes to palettes, which is where Graphics Gale is god. You can do everything in Graphics Gale, though; I just spent tens of thousands of dollars learning Photoshop, and I'm determined to use it for everything.
Ill get into operating those programs when I get off work if its freeware. Where do I find weapon palettes to modify them?
My gameplan is to mod each campaign event in order to my liking. After speech and scripting is done, I work on palettes and sprites, then debug. The trick here is doing them in order. (The maps and events seem to be layed out in those programs out of order.)
I figure with a spouse, a kid and full time job I might just be done in 12 years.
1.
Sorry for the doublepost, but I was looking in the patcher under the animations tab. I saw a bunch of boxes, some of which are checked, but nothing to indicate what each of these boxes are. Should I just avoid this completely?
Don't avoid it, play with it! If you don't feel like messing around with it, just find an ability with a current animation that you want (say you wanted Throw Stone to have the talk skill animation) look at the 3 boxes on the right side and copy those values to your new ability!
Where are the item/weapon palettes located?
sorry for asking so many questions in one topic.
Quote from: DERIDEX120 on December 14, 2015, 05:58:58 pm
Sorry for the doublepost, but I was looking in the patcher under the animations tab. I saw a bunch of boxes, some of which are checked, but nothing to indicate what each of these boxes are. Should I just avoid this completely?
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8352.msg165621#msg165621