Final Fantasy Hacktics

Ahh, shoot. Yeah, this is an oversight from when I tried to give Beastmasters bows. I must have missed moving one ability back to instruments/poles. For now there's no way to teach that ability, but I'll have it fixed in the next update. (Spoiler alert: I can give Beastmasters bows now; thanks Rurusaschi!) Sorry! Sucks that it's needed for a Blue Magick spell, too.

ETA: My notes show that I intended to put that ability on the Ivory Pole, so it might still be there. It depends on how exactly I screwed this up.

Quote from: PrismariLaura on May 09, 2025, 09:47:55 amOh, and I have a question/suggestion: can Viera snipers dual-wield 1-handed guns? Is it an engine limitation, or a balance choice?

I'm not sure if guns can be dual wielded or not. I can technically set the flag to allow it but sometimes that crashes the game due to animation issues. I haven't messed with which weapons can be dual wielded for that reason. I could find out, though. Dual wielding guns would be pretty cool for both Snipers and Hunters, if you wanted to build a gunslinger character. I don't think it would be overpowered, although obviously I'd test it out first. I'll look into whether or not it's possible.

Quote from: PrismariLaura on May 05, 2025, 07:44:26 pmLess bug report, more minor annoyance

There are two ways for a Bishop to learn Magick Counter - the Chameleon Robe, and the Magick Ring. Is this intended?

Oh, whoops, looks like you're right. I should probably take it off one of those. Leaning toward leaving it on the Chameleon Robe, but I'd hear arguments for the Magick Ring instead.

Quote from: mrsedgewick on May 03, 2025, 08:49:15 pmMission: Airship S.O.S.!
(snip)

I intentionally trivialized this mission because it was really frustrating with how I had changed the stealing skills. Since stealing is so much more accurate now it was almost impossible to avoid getting stolen from. I didn't think that kind of difficulty was particularly fun.

Curious for opinions on this. Do people prefer this mission as a total cakewalk or a frustrating nail-biter where you almost have to stunlock the enemy to avoid breaking the law?

Quote from: eontree01 on April 30, 2025, 11:03:23 amDid you manage to fix the spells and monster damage scaling? The older mods couldn't solve this problem even with setting the level cap to 50. RFH fairies' meteor can OHKO at lvl 1 but only deals 40% of an average character's health at lvl 50. I see you have tinkered a lot with base damage of abilities. Did this solve the problem?

I did what I could to address this, but I don't know if I'd call it "fixed" exactly. I think characters still get relatively tankier as the game goes on, but combat should be faster and more lethal at all levels of play, including the late game.

It might be awhile, I'm afraid. The update is almost ready to go but I have a few more things I have to test, and a series of personal crises has put that on hold for a little while. I'm frustratingly close, but just not quite there and I don't know when I'll be able to work.

I had been taking a break, but all the fan feedback and great suggestions I've been getting have energized me to start active development again. I spent today implementing a lot of the changes I want to make for the next patch, and I'm going to start testing tonight. The next update is still probably a little ways off, especially if my scope balloons like it tends to, but for right now the plan is to have a relatively small update out soon, assuming I don't break anything or hit any major snags in testing.

Quote from: Drops on January 22, 2025, 12:03:53 pmHi Shrike, I started playing this a couple of weeks and I'm super happy you made this.

Good rebalance on most skills and jobs, and I loved what you did with Strongarm (aka the only damaging attack I used for the first 40 hours).

So glad you're enjoying it!

Quote from: Drops on January 22, 2025, 12:03:53 pmI still want to make a more detailed analysis, but I'd like to give my opinion on Spellblade: it's not good at all as it is.

I don't remember how strong it was in the original game, but right now it does less damage than Elementalist but on close range.
I've been thinking of ways to counterbalance it and the first thing that came to mind was to give something like Pummel to them.

All their Magick Sword spells would hit twice (with second doing half damage) but then, they would each have a chance to proc the debuff.
This way I don't think it's overpowered and would have a very fun mechanic.

I actually like this a lot. More interesting than just making them deal double damage, and the increased status effect chance would be a big enough upside to maaaybe make up for their melee range. Because I agree that the job lacks some oomph right now. I'll test this and see if I can't make it work for the next update.

Quote from: Drops on January 22, 2025, 12:03:53 pmLastly, which tools did you use to make the edits? Is it something easy like FE Builder for Fire Emblem 8?
If so, I'd like to do some changes for testing (no intent to publish or anything, just for me).

I used basically every tool here: https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11999.0

If you need any pointers on using the tools, feel free to ask me here or on the Discord and I'll try to help as much as I can. I highly encourage you to mess around with them, even if just for yourself - it's extremely fun.

Quote from: LaylaAlder on June 22, 2024, 09:43:02 amPersonally, I am of the opinion that trying to balance a Build-Based SRPG like FFTA or TO is the wrong mindset.  Rein things in a bit?  Sure, but making everything perfectly balanced risks making player choices irrelevant.  Why bother going for strong combination when it doesn't exist, or will be patched out in the next update?

Well said. If everything is equally good you lose the treasure hunt aspect that makes exploring the vast, complicated mechanics rewarding. Learning a new ability or getting access to a new job is more exciting when there's a chance that they'll be above-the-curve good in some way. If everything is perfectly balanced like it's a competitive PVP game you take away a lot of the player's motivation and enjoyment.

I think the trend toward competitive multiplayer in modern games has skewed people's design priorities when we're working on single-player experiences. It feels instinctively "right" to make everything fair, but making things intentionally unfair in calculated ways is how you tell a story with mechanics. It's an effective way to create a kind of drama.

Quote from: LaylaAlder on June 22, 2024, 09:43:02 amNo, the answer isn't to enforce "Balance" imo - rather, it's to avoid the "one build to rule them all".  You don't want any option to be too overpowering, and you do so by giving it competition.

[...]

Ultimately, the goal should be to make things interesting and to reward the player for coming up with strong combos.  If they played your mod from beginning to end, they deserve to find combinations that just do amazing things.

You want to let the player break the game if they work for it. Make them plan, make them persevere, make them be clever, make them explore their options. And part of that is nerfing strategies that let them shortcut the work, because there'll be no motivation to search for fun/clever solutions if it's faster and easier to do something boring instead.

Quote from: Dagoth Ur on June 07, 2024, 03:52:04 amHey, I'm having a major issue on the main character. Despite learning several soldier jobs, he's unable to switch to either archer or paladin.

I changed the requirements for most jobs. Unfortunately I'm unable to edit the job requirement text in game through the editors, and I don't know enough to do it myself through hex editing. You'll have to refer to the included Job Requirements text file for the updated values. Sorry!

I forgot to include this on the list of known bugs in the most recent update. My bad. I've added a note to the first post indicating that this is still necessary.

Are you using the encounter editor to change the units in that fight? Or are you using the recruitable character Nightmare Module to change the units that join your party? I'm not 100% sure but I think if you do the latter and alter the recruitable units but don't change the units in that encounter, it'll play the tutorial out as normal but then replace the recruits with the ones you chose afterward.

EDIT: Never mind, it looks like the module I'm suggesting can't change their races at all, just their loadouts.

I'm intensely curious about this, too. This is something I really want to put in the Shrike patch but couldn't figure out. Ideally it'd be cool to be able to remove quest requirements on all jobs except Heritor.

Awesome, I'm glad you got it working!

That's really odd. I can't replicate the error you're getting. It works fine when I try it using the xdeltaUI program. Maybe there was an error with file corruption during download or decompression? Is anybody else encountering this error?

After months of work, version 1.2 is released! I'm happy with where the patch is at right now, and am probably going to focus on other projects for awhile, so the next update is probably a long ways away. Just fair warning. If there's something you'd like to see in the next update or you run into a problem feel free to let me know!

Quote from: nasuma on January 27, 2024, 05:53:37 pmI'm having trouble with editing AP costs down to single digit Hex values.
Clearly the editor can read values like 100 as "a" but when I type in the text box, it converts it into "A0".
Is there a solution?

That's just a visual bug. As long as you entered the value correctly it should work properly, even though it shows the digits reversed. Just make sure you input a 0 as the first digit, e.g. 0A instead of just A.

Unfortunately there isn't, at least to my knowledge. I really wish there was, both for translation projects and just to rewrite story scenes.

Yeah. I'm intensely grateful to have the editing tools available; as I hope is apparent, I was able to make some pretty dramatic changes to the game with them. They're labors of love that people spent zillions of hours on just to help out the community, and I'd never speak ill of them at all. I'm so grateful for those applications because this project definitely would never have happened without them. But they do have their limitations.

There's a lot more I could do with the game if I were a better programmer and could do the legwork myself. Unfortunately I've got sharply limited free time and energy for my creative projects. I've got a bunch more I'd like to figure out eventually, if my schedule opens up. But for now I'm just doing as much as I can within the constraints of the editors. It's been a fun challenge to see how good I can make the game without being able to do every single thing I imagine. I find that sometimes the second solution I come up with is better than the first, but I never would have gotten there if I had just been able to do what I wanted from the start.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amAs I've been experimenting with late game builds I've started to realize the Nu mou jobs are very samey. I think this is more of a problem with the base game, but I haven't played vanilla in ages so I can't say for sure.

Nu Mou are really frustratingly constrained by some things that are hard-coded into the game. They have a very limited pool of weapons available, and giving them anything else crashes the game. This combined with the fact that all of their stuff is magic-focused except for Beastmasters puts them in a really tight box. They pretty much all just cast big spells and/or bonk with sticks when they're out of MP. I really wish I could do more with them. I wanted to give Beastmasters bows soooo badly.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amScholar feels like a terrible illusionist, spending an absurd amount of mana to damage every unit, even your own, isn't great. Maybe there's some way to revamp this class? My pie in the sky idea is to make it like a nu mou version of the summoner with large area spells with smart targeting. I don't know how feasible it is to change a class that drastically though. Also study just has to go. IDC what it gets replaced by, it's just not very useful with how thieves have been changed.

I like the idea of giving the Scholar the Tinker treatment, cuz like, yeah, Scholars are a pretty dead class. And Nu Mou can only really do the huge AOE thing with Meteor currently, so they'd have at least a little bit of a niche. I'll look into if it's possible. I also like the idea of replacing or reworking Study. I'll give it some thought.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amSage and Alchemist kinda blend together for me, especially since you swapped their spells around. I also am not a big fan of the transmute change. If I'm gonna go for gold drops I'm gonna grab my sniper or my fusilier/thief and get gold from long range. Maybe make it so transmute turns enemies into ethers and rarely elixers or the crystals? That'd give us a good way to farm them. And maybe sage could learn some sort of earth spell like sandstorm instead of blind, would make more sense than a random debuff spell.

I really wish I had that fine-tuned a control over what Transmute gives you. That would be sweet. Unfortunately it's a hard-coded table. Its utility is mostly in being an instant remove effect that just gives you a little bonus on top. I agree it's one of their more niche spells.

I'm not against replacing Blind, since it is a bit of a weird outlier on the Sage's spell list. It's just hard to find a spell that the Nu Mou don't already learn to replace it with. I wish I could just put Quake or Sandstorm on a weapon (I really, really want to put Blue Magic on weapons) but they're not indexed for it. I don't really have an Earth spell to teach them besides Poison or Bio, and those are the Alchemist's thing.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amI feel like Arcanist needs jesus or something. Those level whatever spells are so cheeks. I feel like this Job should be the undisputed king of giant explosive magick. Would it be possible to give it access to nightshade abilities like dimensional rift and turn this thing into the final unlock for nu mou? Also maybe it could learn blood price, I know it works with nu mou since Twiegel has it in one of the house bowen quests early on.

Unfortunately I can't put Nightshade stuff on weapons to learn, because that is an incredibly sweet idea. I really wish I could do that now. I agree that their level-based spells are kinda junk even with buffs, but their gravity-based spells, Drain, and Syphon are all really good. This is another case where I really wish I could just make entirely custom spells or change the animations on skills. What I might be able to do is just turn them into normal spells e.g. Dark, some kind of Haste, and Shadowflare. And that I could work with. I have to check to see if those weird targeting modes are hard-coded into the abilities or something I can switch off.

Giving them Blood Price is kind of terrifying. I mean, I kinda wanna do it, because that sounds rad. But Blood Price is extremely broken, and I have to be really careful about what spells the Viera can learn because they have access to it. I feel like giving it to the Nu Mou, who have access to stuff like Meteor, Gigaflare, and Drain, would be utterly insane.

...but I'm still going to try it out and test. I could put it on some late-game enemies to make it sorta fair. And it would retroactively make Tweigel make sense.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amAlso a little thought on the white mage, I do think the increase in MP costs really makes it unviable till late game. I just had my thief dodge tanking and running potions to people for healing. Honestly I'm not sure what I'd do with this one, maybe cure could be 10 MP instead, that way they can get heals off every turn, but in exchange they won't be able to save any MP up.

My current attitude on this is that anything that heals has to cost more than 10 MP, so that it can't just be spammed every turn. I really want to give healing abilities to the enemies, but if healing is cheap enough to spam it makes fights extremely frustrating and boring, and kinda breaks the enemy AI besides.

I agree this kinda wrecks the White Mage but I'm not really sure what to do about it. I'm not super happy with the Arise spell being in the game at all, so maybe I could swap it out with a different spell? I'm just not sure what thematically fits the White Mage, would plug the hole in their early-game usability, and wouldn't just make them a better Black Mage. The other thing I could do is, say, drop Holy to 18 MP and reduce its power commensurately, so that you'd have a decent attack to use every other turn. I'm worried about this, though, because I'd either have to substantially weaken Holy or deal with the fact that you could cast it every turn after learning Half MP. I also feel like making the White Mage an attack bot works against what they're supposed to be about. I suppose I could maybe teach them Aurablast instead? But that would be redundant with the Fighter; I try not to double up like that.

But I probably have to do something about them, because they're pretty clunky right now.

Quote from: anniejazz on November 22, 2023, 10:53:12 amBTW I could have sworn blue magick was able to be magick frenzied in vanilla, but it won't let me. Is that some kind of bug? also no matter what I try, Hurdy's Hide doesn't work. Crime spree is broken as well, which is an absolute shame considering how bangin it would be. 3 loot, 3 items, and 3 gil drops? YES PLEASE.

I think the only Blue Magick that works with Magick Frenzy is Quake. And I honestly have no idea what's going on with Hide, Crime Spree, and Jackpot. I'm trying to fix them but they're just not working and I have no idea what I broke.

(Also, Crime Spree is just one piece of loot, one item, and one double gil drop. I can't actually cram any more loot into the ability than that in the editor.)

Quote from: Disith29 on November 20, 2023, 03:39:59 pmThanks for your answers! It was very helpful, I'll try to get a magick viera soon.

I am a bit confused with the patch tho. I have applied the 1.1.2 to the same vanilla rom I did with the 1.1.1 (I am a bit paranoid while storing stuff) but does not look like anything changed.
First thing I did was look for Djinn Flyssa but it still has no skills. Black Quena also teaches Zombie, Ghost and Mist's Embrace.
Maybe it does not work if I already had the item?

Actually it looks like there was a problem with the patch. I must have accidentally uploaded the wrong file. It should be fixed now if you redownload the patch and apply the new one.