Final Fantasy Hacktics

well first things first, lets talk about breakpoints. An execute breakpoint will stop the game when that code is reached and about to be executed. Read/Write breakpoints occur when the unit loads or stores a value to that address.

Also be aware that if you reload a savestate, your hack will be overwritten. I don't suspect that's happening here, but just figure'd I'd state it.

if you can't figure it out, post a savestate and I'll check into it.

Aqueous, we will make this hack your first hack. It's very simple and even more so since pride provided the framework. However, I Probly won't be able to give you detailed instructions until this weekend. If you want you can probably figure it out though.

Prides hack checks if a unit has a certain support ability equipped (from 0x92 status set). All you need to do is check if the units equipped skillset = whatever you want it to attach to. Check unit data (801908cc in data locations) for which bytes are primary and secondary skillset (I think they're 0x12 and 0x13). So instead of loading 0x92,  we load 0x12. Then put the value of the skillset you want it to attach to in a register, then do a bne comparing the two.

you could even apply Prides hack and step through it to understand what's going on. Good luck

Also get used to breaking the game lol. Again step through your routine and see why your code fails, then fix it. Just a part of the business.

One method you could use is looking at where the jumps in the hack are. Large routines are in free space but at some point you have to jump to get there. So you look at where the jumps occur in vanilla code, then check that routine on the wiki to find out what the routine is doing at the time. I'll take a look at RAD later and see if I can point out a good example

They correspond to this data:



so setting status 5 = 0xC0 would make faith and innocent be canceled by HP damage. nah mean? Any combination of statii for each group can be added to make a hex number. 0xFF would be all status of the group.

As for physical vs. magical... I forget how the hack is laid out but I'm guessing it mimics how sleep is cancelled when hit. Same rules should apply.

OR and AND commands can be interpreted mathematically to shed some light on how they work. take a look at the following tables. The first is for OR and the second is for AND.





anything OR'd with 0 is itself. so that ori r3, r0, 0x000A is basically saying "r3 = 0x0A OR'd with Zero", and so it becomes r3 = 0x0A.

when it's used as ori r3, r3, 0xcccd, it's adding 0x0000cccd to whatever r3 already is. So:

lui r3, 0xcccc -        r3 = 0xcccc0000
ori r3, r3, 0xcccd -   r3 = 0xcccccccd

I think this type of usage has to do with floating point multiplication and division. Decimal values are stored in a wierd way in ASM.... but honestly I've always been able to circumvent that usage by doing exactly what Xif mentioned. So it's not something you even have to understand unless the need arises.

Don't worry, this is the hardest ASM will ever be. Only gets easier.

Also, I saw your other comment. Do you have the psX emulator with a debugger? You can set a "breakpoint" in it at any point in the code and the game will freeze when it hits it. Then you can step command by command and view exactly what's in the registers. Then you can reference the addresses that are used in the registers and codes in the "Data Locations.txt" file which holds pretty much all the data we've found out (which is quite a substantial amount at this point).

Check here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=9608.0

Don't worry, I was quite lost when I first started reading them too. It's the type of thing where the more times you read it or the more supplemental information you get, the more it all makes sense.

Anything you're confused about you can always post a question in the help forums too even if it's just ASM learning. I enjoy teaching and so I have no issues helping people out in that area.

Now in regards to overwriting code: Luckily, the FFT ISO has a big section of Kanji characters that are unused in the english version. We refer to this as the "Kanji Table" or "Free space" because it is just that - free space. So when we want to add in whatever code we want, we put our code in this section and just jump to it from the vanilla routine.

As I'm thinking about it... the hack you want to do may be a bit involved since you have to do quite a bit: enable the job on the job wheel, account for male/female, set the corresponding pre-battle formation sprite and portrait, set the job level requirements... Probably not the best one to embark on for your first hack. But the better you get, the bigger hacks you can make

interesting thought... However, pokeytax is seldom seen around here anymore unfortunately. I may try to clean these tools up once I graduate in the summer, but don't hold your breath

It may be a more attainable feat to make a new ASM hack to do what you want to do. Although daunting at first, it only takes some persistence to learn, and we have a large amount of info about the game code on the wiki and tools to help. You could also request it in the ASM requests thread, but there are very few active ASM'ers atm.

Unfortunately everybody has been more busy than usual... real life is just too OP.

Finishing touches are being put on the sprites, a couple of ASM's need to be written, and then we can commence bugtesting.

If it's not out by the summer, I would expect progress to pick up around then.

Quote from: Pride on March 13, 2015, 06:55:39 pm
Mime hardcoding OP

I'll take a look tomorrow

Thanks for the congrats, and here's what I have:

1. Is there an easy way? probs not. However, I've recently uploaded all of the disassembly in Battle.Bin to the wiki: http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/BATTLE.BIN

00193e50 to around 0019f2f0 are the AI routines.. so chances are movement decisions are in there somewhere. Although, the exact location is, as yet , unknown.

2. This is a pretty interesting idea. One could hardcode certain ability ID's to initialize a "to be invited after battle" byte for each unit in battle.. then after battle check that instead of invite. However, there is also a bunch of other hardcoding for invite which one would have to remove.

3. For this one you may be in luck. I planned on making a berserker for my own patch and allowing him to use the second half of a skillet when berserk only. So the second half of the skillset would be "berserk only" abilities. The only thing is I don't know when I'll get around to doing this because I'm terrible at making progress with a patch >_> I'd like to do it sometime though.

Nice work! glad we could square that away pretty quickly

How much are you willing to bet Grond?

Turns out it's not quite a simple fix to do via ASM. I documented the relevant parts of the routine here: http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Load_WEP_graphic_from_WEP1_Sheet

The routine does an offset calculation to find out where on the WEP sheet to load from, but it references some stuff in the WEP.SHP file which I didn't really care for figuring out. In the end, the routine adds 0x10 to the Y offset... which bumps each weapon graphic to the one right below it. However... I guess this only happens for draw out skills... or katanas...

Anyways... I tried a quick fix for this by editing the WEP1.SHP. It fixes the Rod issue for normal draw-out skills and hopefully doesn't break anything else. This is about all I want to devote to fixing this though. Elmdor is just... fucked lol. I have no clue why he specifically would wig out like that

Thanks for bringing that to my attention.. here's what's going on: That hack writes a block to f6160, then has a variable that can be set by the user at f6174. The variable is written over the f6160 code. So technically it is a "conflict" but it must have been written that way on purpose. Truthfully, it's kind of lazy by the writer, but no harm done.

pops, I'm back from my trip but I can't guarantee that I'll be able to work on this stuff anytime soon. I'll be pretty busy until the summer. Nonetheless I'd like to at least see your code, so pm me with the repository info or any info you need from me

No, the Unknown tabs are unknown... and the second table ID is... less unknown, but not quite what you're looking for.

However, fret not! To change the graphic and palette of in-battle weapon sprites, use on of Raven's workbooks which offers this functionality. Look in the important links thread to find his workbooks.

Welp, I still have my notes so I'll send them to you when I get home from my trip.im interested to take a look at the source code behind your renderer... when I was trying to do rotation, scaling, etc it was a nightmare. And luckily C# is my native programming language. Maybe we can get something rolling.

Thanks pops, I haven't really updated them much at all. In fact, I lost the source code to the effects editor. I still have all my notes about the effect file structure and all, but they're honestly a nightmare to figure out. That tool was actually my first C# program, so I planned on rewriting it anyway at some point... I have no idea when I'll get around to it though. However, any advice is always appreciated if you know stuff that I dont How did you plan to improve the visualization?

This should help http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7719.0

Don't feel bad about your hex editing statement. We don't know the address in memory of paper bag data

holy freakin crap the finale of this is ridiculous.

in regards to the dragon targeting becomes monster targeting thing, i'm pretty sure the hack has been done a couple of times actually. You'll have to search the forums though because at least for me it was one of the first hacks I did and didn't record it in a hacking thread or anything.

then for the reaction thing, stand by for now. I have a hack in the works that will give you many more options for counter abilities.

Update: Fixed the Chocobo hack somewhat. You shouldn't get multiple turns by accident now. BUT, sometimes when you first mount a chocobo it will be tired from its last move and not be able to move. Hopefully it happens consistently so I don't have to fix it again ^_^