Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: nitwit on February 14, 2022, 02:23:27 pmThat is all well and good, but this is the FFTA board and while OP didn't explicitly say so I'm pretty sure he just wants to know the currently existing limits rather than how to transcend them.

This is very accurate.  My reason for starting this is to see what the community has accomplished and how far the game has been pushed to date.

I've set my personal "end goal" to become skilled enough to contribute modding tools for the community.  However, that is a commically long way off for me, who is still mastering the lingo and basic concepts of coding/modding.  So for now I'm just trying to avoid "reinventing the wheel" and figuring out a good starting point for my learning.

I got some help from the Pokemon rom hacking community.  Ellabrella game me this response to Checksums

Quote from: undefineda "checksum" is a pretty general concept in computer science. basically, data is stored as numbers, and there's a way to do some mathematical thing to those numbers, such that you get a unique answer which can only be generated from those specific numbers. that unique answer is called a "checksum", and it means that if any of the data used to generate the checksum is changed, you will get a different checksum. so basically it's a way of checking that the data being looked at is the same as the data which the checksum was generated from.

it's true that every GBA ROM has a checksum in its header. this checks certain data that nintendo requires from every GBA game, like a 4-letter game code, a 2-letter maker code, and a version number. a real GBA will crash if the checksum doesn't match the data for this section. there's a tool you can use to calculate this checksum for you. i found this info on pokecommunity here: https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=440897

this checksum only deals with a very small section of the header, so it has nothing to do with the rest of the content of a ROM. certainly it wouldn't prevent you from editing dialogue or characters. but as mentioned earlier, a checksum is something that can be implemented in a lot of different ways, in a lot of different places, for a lot of different reasons. [for example, the GBA pokemon games use a checksum to make sure that a pokemon's data is legitimate.](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_data_structure_(Generation_III)#Checksum) if a pokemon's data is edited by a hacker without considering the checksum, the game turns the pokemon into an unusable "bad egg" as an anti-cheat measure.

so probably what your game's community is having trouble with is a hacking-prevention checksum specific to something in that game. if that's the case, then unfortunately it wouldn't have a general GBA solution.

Quote from: matchet on February 08, 2022, 06:33:15 pmAs long as we find a magical solution to break rom's cheksum limits, we are constrained on question 1 to play/mod what already exists.

Thank you for your response.   Wow this is going to be a trip to figure out rom hacking.

This has lead me to dig into what checksum's are. To my understanding, checksum's are the roms way to identify a file.  However, I read that this is done by an alograthim?  Theoretically, that means it is possible to create a checksum for a new file, adding in new content?

(I'll have to dig much more to see if my theory is full of holes or not.  I'm so new I don't know how much of a challenge I'm setting for myself, but as of right now this has me excited.  Thank you again for your response.)

So I have gone from a computer caveman to trying to learn modding as of this month.  Its mainly because seeing the amazing work of everyone on this forum to my all time favorite game got me excited.  As I am still working on trying to figure out the basics of how to even properly change anything, I wanted to try and see how much my ambition is fiction vs possible.  So I wanted to ask here since no one would know better then this community.

Question 1: for FFTA or FFTA2, is it possible to add a new class without overwritting a previous one?  Example: could I add the dark knight to Hume without destroying an already existing class?  Similarly, could that be done with an entire race, item, equipment, monster, etc.

Reason for this question is that all the mods I've seen replace an existing class rather then adding a new one entirely.  What I'm really asking is if this possible, not if it is easy.  I'm already aware of how much of a learning curve I'm about to go on so something being even harder is more of a challenge then an obstical.

Question 2: for FFTA or FFTA2, is there a limit to how much you could add?  Example: if in FFTA I added every monster from FFT and then tried adding in every class from FFTA2 would I hit some barrier where the game couldn't handle it.

There are a lot more questions, but I'm still learning basic modding technique so I'm at the point where I'm deciding if I should focus on FFTA or FFTA2.  It really is more based on how much the systems would let me add since I have a pretty extensive idea for where I want to end.  I've been breaking it down into sub goals and I think these two questions would help me figure out where my efforts should be pointed.

Thank you to anyone that can help me with this.

Just found this and am super excited to try this out.

As a kid, my enthusasum for the game was broken when I realized some quest items and monsters could be missed, locking me out of 100%.

As an adult, I found the game a bit unchallenging.  Hearing that the difficulty has ramped up has me excited. Curious about the new jobs as well.

This is honestly everything I was hoping I'd find when I decided to search for a mod, so I'll give it a go and leave some feedback again when I finish it.