Final Fantasy Hacktics

Wow.

Holy crap.  Okay, so I had an epiphany while responding to Elric's post.  Every time that someone said to delete the text offset, I thought they literally meant the text "offset" at the beginning of the event.

I just tried deleting the 3rd line of text in the .txt that actually is the text offset and now all the buttons in EasyVent are my friends.

Thanks so much for your help guys!

Ok, I have to apologize, clearly I didn't read carefully enough before asking my question- all I remembered was that you'd mentioned you'd hidden items in the early game that wouldn't be findable until later.  I'm really excited that the NG+ edits you're describing are possible, then.

I'll start reading up on event instruction upgrade hack and go through this thread much more carefully before I ask you any more questions.

The two ISO thing was me thinking that, in the worst case scenario, you could always write two games on two totally different disk images if you didn't know how to do NG+ edits, and treat disk 1 as the normal run through the game and disk 2 as the NG+ mode.  You'd just take your save file from the first disk and play through the NG+ edits you made on the second disk.  Hardly an elegant solution, but it would sort of work.

Re: Elric moving the thread, thank god, I thought I was losing my mind.  Lol.

Re: The actual contents of this thread, I've arrived at a partial solution.  As long as I don't try to use the buttons in EasyVent, I can replicate their functions and get the result I'm after.  I load up the Event in EasyVent, muck about with it, copy and past into a notepad file, save it in my Custom Events directory so I have it for later, copy/paste into Event.txt when I'm ready to go, and double-click the EventCompiler_2.01b sitting in the same directory.  Following this process, the relevant Test.EVT file is not causing subsequent event edits to overwrite each other and events are being edited without issue.

So... long story short, I don't know why I can't get the EasyVent buttons to cooperate, but it doesn't matter, because I'm able to edit events successfully anyway.  Yay! 

If anybody is curious, here's one of the Event.txt files I was using, but my guess is that I messed something up when I was downloading and extracting EasyVent somehow, because the Event.txt is working fine once it stops interacting with EasyVent.  I'm happy to cooperate if someone feels like this is evidence of a meaningful problem with the program itself, but since it looks like nobody else has reproduced this particular bug my guess is that it's solely on my end.  Thanks for your help everybody!

I just want to be clear- I'm pumped about basically everything about this patch.  But I do have a question that I'm well aware is related to what's being asked above, and I apologize for that, but I think it's a distinct question worth answering, if possible.

Is there any way to add content that is solely for the second run through?  I assume the new opportunity to save that's introduced by The Lion War for New Game + option is loadable by other FFT isos and brings you back to the beginning of the game.  If that's the case, I would think you could always just structure two isos, one intended for the first run, and the second for the NG+ run, right? 

But is there any other way that we know of to add things to the game that don't trigger until the player is in NG+?  Is there an unused flag somewhere that a creative modder could later find good ways to implement that we might attach to the NG+ event happening?  Something like that?

Thanks Glain!  I'll look into doing that.

Huh.  Yeah, that's what I'm seeing at the top of the event page when it's giving me trouble.

So far the only way I can get this to function for me is to just skip the compile and save buttons in EasyVent entirely and copy/paste from EasyVent into the Event.txt, save it in Notepad, and then double click the compiler program sitting in the same directory as the .txt and my Test.EVT file.  I'm not sure whether or not that's actually writing properly, though.

I'll have to work on this some more tomorrow.  At least I'm at a point where there's something else I can test about this.  And hey, if this method is working properly, it's good enough for me, but I'd be pretty confused about why the buttons in EasyVent would throw errors if I could have a different program do the same thing without issue.

Thanks again for your help, guys.

Progress!  Of a sort.

So the issue I was describing above where everything was saving to Offset x00002000 was solved by following up on Raven's question, because I was not saving my event prior to hitting compile.

So I tried hitting save first, and I got an error telling me that the Offset text needed to be deleted.

Then I deleted the Offset text and got an error telling me that the Offset text had been deleted.

Then I thought that maybe I could just skip saving and put the text of my event directly into the Event.txt in the directory and tell EasyVent to compile that way, but I got the same set of errors when I hit the Compile button. 

Thanks so much for your help so far guys, anything else you could offer would be equally awesome

Thanks so much for the quick response!

I have a followup question, though- right now it doesn't seem to matter what event I've opened, whenever I hit the compile button in EasyVent I see a popup box telling me that it's written to Offset x00002000.  Is there something I need to do to alter the events when I load them up in EasyVent to make sure the text at the top of the event about the Offset functions appropriately?  I've seen references in the forums to deleting the text offset but not the offset itself, and I'm not sure what that means.  Every time I alter the "Offset(x00004000)" or "Offset(x0004C000)" etc. I get an error message about the Offset either needing to be deleted or an error message about how the Offset has been mistyped or is missing. 

Clearly the problem is with the user, cause everyone else uses this program without issue 

EDIT:
I also just realized that this was posted into the Modding>Event Editing forum instead of Help, where I had intended to place it.  I'm not sure how to move this to the right place, but I'll fix it if someone tells me how.  Sorry about that.

I'm sorry, I know this is almost certainly a question that someone else has asked, and maybe I'm just not following something in the tutorials, but when I'm using EasyVent, every time that I go to compile an event I'm told by the ESVP popup that the Event was successfully compiled to Offset x00002000.

Am I right in thinking that's a problem?  Doesn't that mean each of my events are overwriting each other?  And if that is what's happening, I assume there's a way to stop it, but I can't figure out how.  Can someone help me out?

My guess is this will either be pretty simple or massively complicated, but is there any way to change the game's routine for evade to treat the EV stat as a % damage reduction stat (so 13% dodge chance = 13% reduced damage instead)?  Maybe by cannibalizing that hack that attaches damage multipliers to different status effects?

Hey guys, just a sort of housekeeping question- I could have sworn I first downloaded the EasyVent editor Raven put together from the downloadable Tools page of the Main Site here, but I can't find it there.  Is the most up-to-date version still the one that Raven has in his signature line?  Do we know?

Hey, not sure exactly how to implement your download.  If I go into the Final Fantasy Tactics [Complete] Event Director folder and replace the existing files with your attached ones, will EasyVent work properly when editing those levels?

First off, I love the idea of having an alternative to crystallization and I'm excited that Choto's working on something to that end.  Good idea, sir, I offer you much encouragement, and if I knew what I was doing yet I would offer you actual help with getting it done.

If I can make a suggestion, I really like the idea of Choto's hack oriented around being able to pay for a character to rest in an inn and recover.  Personally, I'd be inclined to make it about both money and number of days- you pay for each day they have to stay there (which makes intuitive sense), and the number of days that they have to be there scales off of their level.  Add a Y-value of some sort for the end modder to change how much the money cost scales with level so that flexibility is retained for different approaches to levelling and money-per-battle hacks.

Here's why I think this is a good idea:

1. Money is a more fungible commodity than per-battle scaling, and can accomplish the same goal if the scaling is high enough.

2. Money scaling allows players to make a choice between selling equipment and trying to fight using different members of the party, which at least has the potential to be interesting in multiple approaches to the game. 

3. This approach has a strongly developed explanation- you're paying for each day they have to stay.  Another reasonable explanation might be to simply say you were paying for their medical bills and buy the person back immediately, but as Choto has mentioned above, time limitations really aren't meaningful limitations at all and I don't think we should be afraid to add them to the game.

4. Using the "will someone reset" standard ultimately results in making no changes at all, since any change that is impactful enough to be interesting is also going to be challenging enough to cause at least someone to avoid it.

5. Gil-cost allows players to make decisions about gil management in advance of a character being injured, which adds another layer to game-related decisionmaking, whereas per-battle restrictions are an unavoidable penalty.  Personally, I think that more nuanced gil management would add a lot to FFT, where I often myself flooded in cash anyway due to my farming tendencies. 

6. Neither per-battle nor per-gil restrictions actually force a wider roster of characters from the player, since both can quickly be recovered from with farming, and per-gil is more nuanced.  If you really wanted to force a wider roster, you'd restrict it to storyline progression and force the player to get past story levels with what remained of their roster.  Making that conform to story hacks might be problematic, so my inclination would be to stick to per-gil restrictions.





That being said, I understand that you're doing all the work on this, Choto, I respect your right to make decisions about it, and I'll be psyched to play around with whatever you put together.

So I'm not sure exactly where else to put this question, as I'm not sure exactly what I need to use to make the changes I have in mind.

I was wondering if there was a way to make the Lion War feel... well, more warlike.  It looks to me like I can go through and add more soldiers to the FFTPatcher ENTD tabs for random encounter levels that only show up later in the game (pretty much the whole map that happens after Act II), so that aspect is pretty easy to get started on, but I'd love to know if there's a way to take the stages that are only used for story levels in the vanilla version and make them spring random encounters once the storyline progresses past a certain point.  I just think it would be so cool to have a bunch of Hokuten knights attack Ramza sometimes when he steps into Lesalia Imperial Capital, or have the Black Lion Knights come after him in Bethla Garrison.

I don't know if there is a way to either

1. Add in new ETND tabs for more random encounters (strikes me as unlikely), or

2. Modify old random encounters so that some of their triggering conditions spring to the appropriate story level using the host ENTD tab when Ramza steps on the city in question.

I know that we could use either the 0x006E or 0x006F words from this list http://ffhacktics.com/instructions.php?id=B0 to track storyline progression, but I don't know anything about how the triggering conditions for ENTD tabs function.  I know Xifanie put together a spreadsheet (it's here http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=10331.0;attach=13940) listing those triggering conditions and including some sort of ASM hack, but it doesn't look to me like the spreadsheet is set up to allow for editing of those conditions at the moment.  The structure of the spreadsheet would suggest that what I'm trying to do is possible, but I have no idea how to go about making the spreadsheet into something that would allow for editing and a resulting XML page the way that some of the tools floating around this forum function.

Can anybody offer me a hand with this? 

I realize that you've marked this as solved, but if you're feeling brave, this is what you would do to accomplish that hack (mod?).  I'm new here, but I've been using RAD as a key part of my hacking experience since April of this year, so I can help a little.

You absolutely can use RAD to do what you want to do, but it is going to be a slow process.  Go download it here and look around the spreadsheet so what I'm talking about makes some sense to you.  http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=7031.0;attach=7988.

First off, and this one is easy, RAD won't let you attach "mastered" as a prerequisite, but it will allow you to set a job level as a prerequisite.  Since job level is determined by JP, and JP is how you learn the skills to make the little "mastered" star show up, it's pretty close to the same thing.  Just do the math and pick the appropriate job level.

The issue with skill learning overlap is explained pretty well by PokeyTax here in his second post down the page http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7031.40).  If you play around with the FFTPatcher you'll see what he's talking about with skills and slots.  On the off chance that you don't have the FFTPatcher Suite yet, it's here. http://ffhacktics.com/downloads.php?id=29. The remaining drawback, which you can't undo with clever positioning in the FFTPatcher, is that your new job will come with as much JP as its "host" job has earned.  I'd recommend using the Dancer, Bard, and Squire as your "host" jobs for the Dark Knight, Holy Knight, and Holy Swordsman jobs, as they will be unlikely to cause problems for you on this front.  Additionally, since it is impossible for units to otherwise have levels in both Dancer and Bard, adding level requirements from these host jobs to unlock Holy Swordsman will not cause the class to be accidentally unlocked prematurely.  After you set up RAD to tie your new jobs with their appropriate host jobs and set up your job prereqs for unlocking them, you should pick the sprites that you'll be replacing with whatever you want these jobs to look like.

This step, more than anything else, might be what persuades you not to pursue this.  You'll have to find existing sprites that the game was using and make them look totally different.  This, in turn, may require you to go through the game and remove people from the game so that you don't have really bizarre cut scenes and or battles as a result.  Alternately, you could just make your new classes look exactly like existing people, but again, that could feel weird to you.  Another decent option- make a class appear unisex and steal one half of their old sprites.  Of course, that will require you to make sure the other half doesn't appear in the game somewhere via the ENTD tab of the FFTPatcher.

Once you've made your choice, you'll go into Shishi (it's part of the FFTPatcher Suite), find the section that has the sprite you are replacing, and import your shiny new sprite.  Once it's imported it's done, no need to look around for a save button because there isn't one.

Then the crappy part.  You have to go through the experience of replacing formation sprites, because despite the battle sprites being handled beautifully by Shishi, formation sprites are just the pits.  Follow Celdia's tutorial here http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6702.0, which will require you to google and download graphics gale, download CDMage http://ffhacktics.com/downloads.php?id=7, and FFTEVGRP http://ffhacktics.com/downloads.php?id=14.  Sidenote, CDMage is only going to work for you if you're trying to set this up to be played via PSX. 

And then you're done!  I realize you may no longer be interested in trying this, given that you've marked the thread as "answered," but I thought I'd at least try to outline what it would require for you.

Hey, I'm not totally familiar with appropriate forum ettiquete, so I apologize if this is in the wrong place.

I tried implementing the katana nobreak code from above, and the xml for the patch I used matches the code above.  When I play, the characters no longer display the "katananame broke" text, but swords are still sometimes disappearing from my inventory when I use samurai skills.  It kind of looks like this might only be part of the necessary fix?

Hi guys,

Question time:
1. I've been making use of Pokeytax's RAD 3 spreadsheet, which I downloaded here (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7031.0).  It is awesome.  But.
2. I want to make use of the A0 column for storyline progression.  There's a discussion between Pride, Glain, and Poxeytax on page 3 of that topic (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7031.40) that indicates that this is an integer value that increments by 1.  Apparently it is 0x006E from this list (http://ffhacktics.com/instructions.php?id=B0).
3. When I try to make use of this column in the spreadsheet, I end up tripping error where all of the new jobs bug out (as in, are automatically mastered and have no text connected to them) and all of the sprites associated with them become Chapter 1 Ramza.  This last part is mentioned by Jack of All Trades on pages 6 and 7 of the topic as being related to patching more than once, but I find that I only see this bug when I attempt to make use of the column in the spreadsheet.  I suspect I'm just using the column wrong somehow.
4. This error has occurred both when I start with 6E as the value from which I increment, and when I start with 01.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

I've included the .xml files for both the "just fine" and "way too many Ramzas" RAD patches I've tried.

If anyone can help that would be amazing!



TLDR: What do I put in the AO column of Poxeytax's RAD 3 spreadsheet to get it to do what it is supposed to do?





EDIT:  Turns out that the secret to making the AO column of the spreadsheet work was in putting an apostrophe before the bit when I entered it into the spreadsheet.  I'm using Open Office, and unless you literally type '01, the spreadsheet converts 01 into just 1, and you end up with screwy code on the .xml tab because there aren't enough digits to form full bits.  Reformatting the cells to display another leading zero doesn't actually add another zero to the value in the cell, which was what I had attempted previously to make the entries look right, and so I got the messed up code I was describing initially. As long as you enter hex integers with an apostrophe out front this part of the spreadsheet works beautifully.  I'm a little embarrassed at how long this took to figure out.

Excellent!

Thank you, that worked like a charm.

Hi guys!
This is my first time posting, I've been using your forums and hacking tools since around April of this year.  You've all done awesome work.

Long story short, I'm currently trying to put together a mod, and one of the things I'd like to do is reduce the number of people you can bring with you on random encounters.  Essentially, I don't want to feel like I'm leaving one guy out every time I hit a story level, and thanks to the spritesheet cap of 9 I can't just edit the attack.out file for the storyline to permit 5 people without causing major glitches.  Since I can't make the party bigger, I'd rather just go down to 4 all the time and maintain a feeling of continuity through the whole game.

Does anybody know if there's a way to edit the attack.out files for random battles (and if so, where they are located) so that the permitted party size is 4 people?