Final Fantasy Hacktics

Alright so I need to know  how to get custom sprites working on FFT WOTL. I'm trying to get Sephiroth, Reno, Tifa, Barret, Alucard, Snake, Tidus, Vincent, Zack and Aerith (Aeris) so that they'd show on the unit screen and in battle. I've downloaded Lion Editor and Shishi Sprite Editor. what I'm aiming here is to get them in a way Unique so that it won't replace any original Uniques (in example Cloud or Agrias) and so that there won't be multiple of the same character (In example like every Squire being Zack. if this is possible i mean) so yeah... I need an Idiot proof guide of it.I'm trying to prove to my friend that this is indeed possible and i also want to experience the awesomeness that I am missing now   I've tried reading other tutorials about spriting but the only thing I achieved was that i ruined my save file >_<" and now i'm hoping that I'd be able to start a new one with the characters stated above and still be able to gain the characters that are gainable without FFT hacking ^_^

not possible.

There's a very limited number of free sprite slots, and even less free job slots.  Something somewhere has to be cut first.

But the actual mechanics of turning Agrias in Tifa (e.g.) is a rather simple function of both lion editor and shishi.

Regardless, WELCOME TO FFH, WHERE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.

1.  You cant get them without hacking

2.  I'll tell you right now, It's not possible to get all those characters in the game the way you want because there is a limit to replaceable formation screen sprites (At most without losing any special characters or generics you can get 3 in) and you'll need to do quite a bit of work in Shishi Sprite Editor, FFTPatcher, FFTEVGRP, and some work in Tactext (to get the lores and names down correctly) just to get those 3.  

3.  If you're willing to ignore them having glitchy formation screen sprite you can add quite a bit more than 3 (you'll be able to get most of them in there).

4.  If you're willing to do number 3 above and sacrafice some generics or special characters you'll be able to get them all in there.

The major roadblock is that you cant really add anything new, you can only replace things, and replacing requires sacraficing.

...Tch! well it can't be helped. time for plan B. I'm ready to sacrifice all except Ramza, Cloud and Balthier. any ideas?

Depends on what you want.  Do you still want them to have formation screen sprites? If so there 2 ways to go about this. There's a 3rd option if you don't care about formation screen sprites.

1.  Replace generic jobs that you don't want or need in your game.  But then generics will have access to them.  Even if you make it impossible for them to access at first by having the job require levels in itself they will eventually learn it through spillover JP, to fix that you'll need an ASM hack to stop spillover JP.

2.  Replace special character.  The issure here is that most special characters have cutscenes that they are involved in, if you don't care about the cutscenes then you're all fine.  But if you do you'll need to do some event editing to fix that, which is a time consuming and requires more knowledge than I have.

3.  If you don't care about formation screen sprites then it's easy, there are several characters that utilize multiple spritesheets, simply replace one of them and edit the ENTDs to replace all occurances of the altered sprite with their other sprite.

You could use a combination of 1, 2, and 3 to achieve your goal as well.

There's a spriting tutorial in the Help forums if you need to help on that.

You'll also need to create skillsets and alter jobs stuff for your characters.  e.g. Marach has 2 spritesheets, one of them is linked to a job that has zeroes in both the multiplier and growth values as well as always starting off dead. (The dead one is the one most people replace seeing as the other is the one that joins your party)

well to start off i don't care if they happen to have cutscenes and if Sephiroth or any other will say odd things in them. and I want them to show in formation screen as well. but I just need a guide on how to get the characters to work and make them show up in the formations screen

To have them show up in the formation screen you'll need to replace sprites of characters that have formation screen sprites.  Every special character that joins has a formation screen sprite, all generics have a formation screen sprite, and a couple other characters.  Formation screen sprites are stored in the UNIT.bin file.  The very last post of the spriting tutorial is by me I go over how to replace formation screen sprites.

Essentially what you need to do is:

1.  Replace Sprite
2.  Edit Job, skillset
3.  Edit ENTD
4.  Edit UNIT.BIN

I'd give you a personal tutorial but I'm in class right now.  If you can wait I'll post a tutorial or upload a video tutorial later tonight when I'm done with school and work.  Most of the information you need is scattered throughout the boards you can look for it and ue that as well if you cant wait.

Alright! I'll see what I can do. I'll drop a message here if i figured it out. Thanks a lot!

what do i do when the custom sprite size exceeds the maximum sprite size? i'm trying to replace the sprites with Shishi sprite manager. and will i be able to change the characters name? if so with what program do i do that?

The newest release of Shishi does not let you exceed the maximum byte size.  However if you download the older version (I have version .352 which you can get from the lioneditor google page) it can force in sprites which are larger than the maximum.

alright i got the sprites done now how do i rename the characters?

You'll need to use Tactext and replace the name of the person you replaced with the new characters name.  You'll want to be careful, while Tactext is far more stable than it used to be it still can cause issues.  I recommend creating copies of your currently edited ISO as backup.  What you want to do with Tactext is edit the text while keeping the data size increase to a minimum.

Crap! I'm a friggin idiot.  Completely forgot about Lioneditor.  If you've already got the characters in your party you can use lionditor to just rename them.

hey i think i got it. i got the sprites changed, now i'm renaming the characters, skills (I can handle this myself) etc but will the characters show in formations screen? if not then how can i fix that?
a HUGE thank you for all who helped!

Editing the UNIT.BIN with FFTEVGRP is how you change the formation screen sprites.  you need to replace the sprite of the old character with the new characters sprite.  e.g.  You replace Cloud with Sephiroth, you'll need load up UNIT.BIN in FFTEVGRP export cloud's sprite and crop Sephiroth's sprite over his and reinsert the new sprite.

how do i get Unit.bin? i tried CD mage but it didn't show the file. i have EU version of the game and i'm not betting on it but does that have something to do with it?

Look under the EVENTS or WORLD folders.  It's in there.

uhh... that's the problem. it doesn't have EVENTS or WORLD folder. the only folders there are SYSDIR and USRDIR and I can't find EVENTS or WORLD folder anywhere. =/

Oh, you have the PSP version.  Then I wouldn't know.

1. First you'll want to create a new folder on your desktop or whereever your workspace is.

2. Load up your ISO in UMDGen.

3  In the USRDIR directory there should be a fftpack.bin, extract that out to your workspace.

4. Next you'll want to load up FFTPatcher.

5. Under the PSP menu thereshould be a utilities  section, select "Extact fftpack.bin..."

6. Select your fftpack.bin that you extracted when prompted and hit open.

7. When prompted to select a location to extract to select the folder in step 1, FFTPatcher will extract all the files inside to that location.

If you look inside the folder you'll have a bunch of folders and files.  The UNIT.BIN is inside the EVENT folder.  Once your done editing the file you'll need to rebuild the fftpack.bin with FFTPatcher and insert the newly created fftpack.bin into the ISO using UMDGen.