Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: Dido on January 28, 2017, 01:19:19 pm
Hello, remembering here that I do not speak English nor can I conjugate your language, (I use Google translator) to send messages!

I wanted to say that the JOT5 project is incredible and that I am looking forward to Ch. 2. Here in Brazil using the term "Fuck" is to say that you are above average is that the free translation hampers the context, the JOT5 project is Wonderful and I know it is hard work but, worth the wait.

A hug.

Probably the closest comparable English phrase is "you're the shit". Just in case it ever comes up again for you

You can even emulate PSX or PSP games on your smartphone or tablet - much more accessible than dragging your old PSP out of mothballs, IMO.

I played Jot5 entirely on my Galaxy Mega.

Well, two issues I can imagine with that suggestion would be the difficulty of implementation and how it might affect the game balance.

I don't think changing the evasion mechanic into a damage reduction effect is an ASM mod that already exists, so it'd have to be built from scratch. Which would be a major time investment.

And a big part of the difficulty in any of the 1-enemy boss battles of Chapter 1 is how evasive they are. A 50% damage reduction isn't as potent as a 50% chance to miss, if you ask me. Consider how much damage can be done to the final boss with Light Arrow, if it hits. If Light Arrow is part of your strategy there, it makes you really, really want Link to get behind the boss, instead of just giving him the highest ground you can and leaving him there, which would make it harder/less likely for the boss to go after him.

If the boss' facing only affected damage reduction, it would be less appealing to sacrifice Link's high ground.

There are also several abilities available that can't be evaded. Changing the way evasion works would take away some of the utility of moves like Omnislash or Ultima.

I think I've heard of issues with using the slowdown patch on an EUR Iso. Try a USA one.

You're using the first palette for the portrait when the portrait uses the ninth palette in FFT.

Also, Type2 can be wonky on PSP. Only put T2 sprites in previously established T2 slots.

There's a few things off with your portrait.

Your picture is fine when it uses the first palette - and so it looks fine just glancing at the base image in the file - but FFT uses the ninth palette for portraits. The portrait is also one pixel too far to the right. And there's no white to the eye, and the beard mixes dedicated skin colors with hair colors, making it look ... off. The trim on the armor and the edges of the beard also aren't consistent.

Finally, a little bit of advice - I'm not at all a pro spriter, but your Ramza portrait has multiple unused colors and a lot of area on the armor where it's just one completely separate color with no shading. Just adding in a bit of shading can go a long way when it comes to that.



I'm sure it's nowhere near perfect, but it definitely looks a lot better like this, I think. I just wanted to quickly put something out there to give you an idea of what improvements can be made.

Here's what the file looks like with the portrait palette separated properly (and it's got my edited version of the portrait in case you want to use that as a base going forward). Open it in GraphicsGale and you'll see that there's just two rows of palettes - the one in the ninth slot is what the portrait uses for the colors, which is why it looks so weird in the default palette.

I'm still fairly green at event editing, but as far as I can tell, the duplicate dialog across all related events is just a redundancy, probably from when the game was in its super early stages and they weren't yet 100% sure on what they'd end up doing for their event structure.

Events with the command DisplayMessage are the ones that actually use the dialog. Those should be the only ones you need to edit.

Hopefully that answers your question?

Finally got around to adding in Twin's portrait (albeit very slightly edited) instead of my hunched over look. Probably should have done that quite a while ago.

>_>

QuoteI'm going too fast with things, I need to breath, sit... relax, and go modding part-to-part.

Yep. Once you get past Patcher/Tactext modding, you start to hit a steep upward curve in terms of the time it takes to learn and do everything you're thinking of doing.

The very first thing you should do is get into the Patcher, check out all the tabs, and plan out all the changes you'd like to implement from there, doing searches for pre-existing topics whenever you have a specific question. We do have some rather useful link topics here.
And like I said, you can change a lot with the Patcher alone. For your first time modding FFT, hammering out what you'd like to do with just the Patcher can be something you'd spend months on.

QuoteWhat was happening is that I was lost in a lot of info and was not getting the right way of using it.

Not just that. You were asking about essentially changing every facet of the game. A project that covers the full scope of what you were asking about would be something like Journey of the Five, and it's taken years for a team to build it up as far as it's gotten. We don't even have the Ch. 1 re-release out yet.

The dedication it'd take to do something that robust is incredibly rare. I'm sure Elric, Xifanie, and Angel have many stories about trying to help a brand new forumgoer learn how to sink their teeth into everything, only to have them go "whoa this is just too much, see ya".

QuoteThe worst problem with my project is that I'm alone doing it all. I'm trying to teach my brother how to do it and so it'll be a project of two people.

Yeah, but everyone's project starts off that way. Not that I'm gonna say that people will just outright join your project, but if you show that you're dedicated to getting it done, people will occasionally help you out. For example:

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10967.0

I was just trying to cook up a Mystic Knight sprite, and I ended up having several people give me advice. In the end, Twinees even outright made the portrait for me, and I've been using it as my avatar for a while (yet I apparently never actually put it in the topic because I'm a forgetful idiot?!? Gotta fix that up).

But all that help probably wouldn't have been provided if I'd just opened up with a list of questions about spriting, instead of cracking open the tools that were there and giving it a serious try before I ever made a topic about the sprite. It also helps that the people advising me were able to mention specific things instead of addressing broad, general questions. (You'll notice a lot of my answers from your last topic say things like "depends".)

QuoteAnyway, can I go and ask my questions just in a topic?
What's better, asking in main post or posting my questions?

Since you already had a pre-existing topic, it would have been best to keep asking questions in it, unless of course one of the admins went "hey, you're posting in the wrong subforum, don't be a butt" or something. Making a new topic doesn't help with the impression that you only skimmed my answers, and for anyone who comes in later to do a topic search for answers to their own questions, it's easier if all the answers for you are up in the one topic.

Just post new messages in your same topic. It'll bump the topic, and any regular forum-goers who're logged in will see the (New) notification next to the topic to boot.

Your questions cover a massive range of topics. Everything from Patcher edits to spriting to eventing to changing battle graphics to ASM (the big one).

One of the answers I gave you in your previous topic was to start your modding adventure by opening FFTPatcher and tinkering with it. You can do a lot of editing with just the Patcher alone (followed by Tactext to change names and descriptions).

Add in everything else you're asking about, and whatever you're planning changes from a couple-month project to a several-year one.

You can't just dive into all of this. Take it slow, start with the easier tools, and learn what reasonable expectations are for a mod project.

And if you had been tinkering with the Patcher and testing things out like I suggested, you'd have several of these questions answered already. Such as: "How do innate abilities work". You slap on the Support/Movement passives as job innate abilities and then that job has them forever. You could have figured out that much in a couple minutes of patching and testing, plus whatever time you spend on any more specific questions on that subject. It's honestly taking me just as much time simply to type that to you as it would for you to have tested it already.
Then I see the question "Can I edit how items get equipped? Example: making one-hand weapons forced to be two-handed?" and I just think... did you even look at the Item tab in the Patcher?

Then you ask something like "Can I create new [abilities]?" and I'm thinking, man, did you even look at the multiple responses I gave you in the last topic?

You've missed some of the answers I've already given. You don't seem to be taking a serious look at the Patcher and giving it a spin, like you should be. And you have no idea what's realistically feasible for your mod. Adding new chapters? Coding? New CG scenes? Holy crap, dude. Learn to crawl before you walk, let alone try to pilot a spaceship.

... I used to not even patch directly to the PSP, but to the ISO on the PC, then move every patched ISO to the PSP, for testing.

I don't know why I did that.

Quote from: Bonesy on December 10, 2016, 08:05:25 pm
I found Fi from skyward sword worse lol

Oh, God. I swear, the only reason she was designed that way was specifically to poke people in the eye who'd gotten frustrated with Navi

QuoteIf you can remove a character from a story and have it affect nothing, that character should absolutely not be a focal point.

Exactly.

And that's what Luso is in FFTA2, too. If you remove him and the grimoire, things get a bit different, but not much, and the biggest issue is the removal of the grimoire, not of Luso himself. Even when his actual Clan leader is out of commission, all he does for the main plot as the acting leader is go fetch some herbs to help him heal (which isn't even his idea) and talk to someone about his grimoire in order to learn that he just has to keep farting around and the grimoire will eventually be recharged enough to return him home.

Compare that to TA1. Marche isn't directly responsible for whipping up Pocket Ivalice, and he does also spend a lot of time farting around, but he himself becomes a major catalyst for change in the story. Remove him from the story, and everyone would have just stayed in Pocket Ivalice where they never have to face their problems anymore, and Mewt would have permanently regressed to that toddler-like mentality that Marche had to break him out of. Marche also goes through a lot of character development as a result of his time there, changing from a shy, sort of awkward teenager into someone with enough self-confidence to fight his own friends and family in order to save them from themselves. TA1's story isn't nearly as complex and engaging as FFT's, but considering it was aimed at the younger GBA audience, I think it did very well with what it had.

FFTA2, however... I was expecting much more out of Luso based on his WotL cameo. To say that I was disappointed is to put it mildly.

Quote from: ChaosStar0 on December 07, 2016, 04:39:36 pm
I don't like it when people insult Vaan. The whole point of him is that he's a viewpoint character, FFXII is Ashe's story but we experience it from Vaan's point of view. I also ship Vaan and Ashe.

I'm not familiar with FFXII, but since this is being said in comparison to Luso, and Luso is the viewpoint character of FFTA2, I'll talk about that for a sec.

Using a character who isn't the main protagonist as the main viewpoint character is a risky move. It can work out somewhat well if they're a close confidant and constant companion of the real protagonist, allowing the audience to still see all the main events as they unfold, featuring the important characters those events revolve around.

But then you have to ask yourself - why is that character the viewpoint character, instead of one of those main characters?

In TA2, Luso is the viewpoint character, despite Adelle and Cid clearly being superior choices for that role. Both of them have closer ties to the main antagonist than Luso. Luso just happens to have a similar item to the antagonist. Adelle and Cid also undergo some character development, while Luso does not. Luso sort of has an impact on the plot in that he is opposed to the antagonist, but in no more than a "you're a bad guy, I'm a good guy and I'll stop your evil plans!" capacity.

I know why Luso is the main character as opposed to them - he's supposed to be filling in the role that Marche did in TA1, the mundane-Earth-born human transported to a land of swords and sorcery. It's supposed to make him a little more relatable to the mundane-Earth-born audience.

But not only do they fail to give him any character development or make him feel like he's driving the story in any way as opposed to his party members, but they also fail at making him the successor to the FFTA Earth-born characters. There are almost no references to TA1 throughout the entire story up until the last scene before the credits, and it's just an "oh yeah I guess that happened once" moment. They could have delved into the history of the grimoires, had Luso periodically unlock Mewt Randall's previous journal entries detailing TA1 and the visits to Ivalice that followed, had Luso be one of the TA1 cast's kids or younger cousins or something... like, anything that tied him to the story in a relevant way and gave him an actual point to being there.

Instead, he's just some random kid that pops in and farts around Ivalice for a while, helping out some good guys and beating up some bad guys until he goes home. He's on the fringe of everyone else's actual interesting storyline, but never does anything other than offer some support to those characters.

If you want an example of how to do this sort of viewpoint character properly, Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia is where you want to look. He does grow into the main character role after the visit to the Tower of Salvation, but before that he's just the guy supporting the Chosen One. Despite that, he has a huge impact on the storyline right out of the gate, including character and plot developments that don't directly involve the Chosen One, even before he sets off on the main quest. Hell, he's initially so unimportant to her journey that he's actually left behind and has to go chase her down on the road.

Really? I hate him. Not as a character or anything, but because he's a cookie-cutter protagonist who farts around the entire time and has no character development. He's the dollar store version of Marche.

He would have been fine as a side character, but as a protagonist? Awful choice.

Excellent, I'm already getting the proper response for the "oh god why" version and it's not even anything but an idea yet. Amazing progress!

QuoteNow you've done it, I am going to create the "oh god why" version. Instead of JUST replacing snake though, I am going to replace the entire team .

If you're gonna do that, I recommend replacing Ramza with Luso, Link with his CD-i version, Dante with his DMC version, Cloud with his KH1 version, and Alma with Algus.

I'm only answering all this to the best of MY knowledge. Could be wrong on some parts.

Modding FFT
In general, to be precisely, what can I do modding FFT?

Can I insert new items, abilities, character slots (insert more room for new units in my party), monsters, maps and music?
Generally no. You can edit existing ones, and there are some unused slots for many things.
Can I translate all the content of a ROM to any language?
In theory. If you're willing to dedicate a lot of time.
Can I play mod in PS1 console? Is mods just designed for working on PC?
Depends on the mod.
Can I insert options for game languages?
If you were willing to spend 10 years doing it maybe.
What's my limits modding? If I'm going to CD by playing my mod version on PS1 is my limit the CD's limit (700mb)?
Not sure.
Can I add new chapters to the game?
Yeah, if you spent time compressing the game's existing events and progression down to make room for it.
When starting in a ROM for modding, is it better using a USA, EUR or JPN one?
Probably USA.

Modding Tools
Considering I'll be doing all the work alone, what will I need for spritting and coding?
We have a subforum for that. Hacking/Patching Tools.
What tools for modding can do for me? Can I have any shortcuts modding through tools?
Depends on the tools. "Shortcuts"?
About saves and these things... Would I need to restart the game everytime I release a patch?
Depends on what you did.

Knowledge
I lack about any knowledge of this area, it's my first time modding and I don't know even how to start and what I can start doing. Could anyone give me a path? Or maybe, advise me one?
Start by tinkering with FFTPatcher & TacText, then with event editing. Use the PSX version.
I have a lot of things I wanna insert in the game and make it be as I dreamed. So, what will I have to know before start modding? Which type of knowledge will I need for modding? What kinds of resources will I need to master?
We have a subforum for this too. Tutorials.
In the past, I was a mod of a forum, can BBcode help me with something modding?
Uh. No. But fluency in that sort of thing might make some stuff marginally easier.

PSX/PSP
Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems PSX version have more support for modding. Am I right? Why?
The gist of it is, the PSP version is a functionally emulated mod of the PSX version with most additions being crudely nailed into the PSX version. It's like slapping two new floors on the top of a house without properly reframing the existing ones. It might work, but if you try to go back and tinker around with the lower floors after that you're probably going to bring the whole thing down on your head.
Can I insert PSP features in PSX version? Most, I would want to add a co-op way of playing and a system of battles for PvP.
In theory, yes. But you'd probably have a more realistic chance of winning the Olympics and/or the lottery.
Can I do it using PSX?
??? Why would you need to insert PSP version features into... the PSP version?
I saw things on forums about a kind of shop, what kinds of shops can I add to game?
A synth shop, thanks to Xifanie's relentless work on it. On your own with no knowledge? That's it.

Treasure/Propositions
Can I add classes/items/units to it as rewards?
No.
Can I add cutscenes to it? After having succeed or don't?
No.
Can I add CG scenes to PSX version?
I doubt it.
Can I add more functions to this system?
Through ASM.
Can I make Propositions repeatable?
Maybe?

Classes
Can I add more classes? Or can I just edit the existing ones?
Generic classes, you have to edit existing ones. There's room to make up some more special unit classes.
Can I add more races? (i.e., human, viera, nu mou, etc.)
Not the way functional human generics work. You could make them special units.
What can I add as pre-requisite for classes?
Any other generic classes you like.
What's my limits adding classes?
Open FFTPatcher and find out.
Can I give classes more inate abilities? Or there's a set number?
Up to 4. Don't give them innate reactions.

Items
Can I add more items? Or can I just edit the existing ones?
Edit.
Can I add more item slots? (i.e., a second acessory, a shoulder slot)
No.

Monsters
Can I add more monsters? Or can I just edit the existing ones?
Edit.
Can I make all monsters playable? I'm aiming the demons cuz we already can't use them by just playing the game normally.
Absolutely. However, some units may not have a Formation sprite, which can cause a graphical error. Does not affect gameplay.

Map
Is there a map editor that can save me time for mapping?
Yes. Ganesha IIRC
Is there any templates for mapping?
Maybe? Never done it.

Space
About space needed for modding, how much of my hard disk would I need for it? I have a ambitious project in mind but I think I must cut some lines...
The biggest thing is probably going to be the size of your ISO file and how many ISOs you have.

Templates
Is there any templates for start modding?
Check Tutorials.
Is there any templates for start codding?
Check Tutorials.

Backup
What can I do to prevent losing my project due to corrupted files?
... Make backups?
When modding, what can corrupt my files?
When modding, what parts of my PC can get affected/damaged?
Is there any risk to my hardware/software by modding?
Nothing. What the hell kind of programs have you been using?

Team
How can I get inside a project and be a member of a team developing a mod?
There isn't a walkthrough to this sort of thing. If you impress someone with your dedication you might be asked to help, but that's about it.
About teams, is there any staff team from the forums or everyone can start a team and start recruiting for it.
Not really.

Testing
Is there a group of testers from the forums?
Sometimes we ask if people want to test things. Not all that often though.

Well, if you really hate yourself that much we could do something like increase the amount of JP required to learn skills and to get Job Levels. 600 JP to learn Potion it is! And job level 3 enemy Knights will have fully Mastered their jobs.

To help you figure out whether you're playing the "oh god why" version, we'll replace Snake with a poorly sprited Raiden.

But no, seriously, I can't imagine there being too much of a demand for a harder version. IMO, if you want a harder playthrough, you'd probably be better off with a self-imposed challenge of some kind, like never changing out of your base jobs.

I've even learned how to break events in new, wildly horrible ways event, so I can work on all the Mark events.

I spent much of yesterday slamming my head against the keyboard trying to figure out what causes all active units to get a sudden case of aquaphobia because they will not obey commands to WalkTo water tiles. As far as I can tell there are multiple different types of event commands that will all separately cause this, and none of them are written erroneously, either.

In the end, I just gave up, and now I'll be making Ramza jump in the creek a different way.