Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hey All,

Having played many days worth of FFT the original I am actually shocked that I have not stumbled on this site or the 1.3 Patch sooner. I have been playing the game again and it is so much fun, the guys who did 1.3 really did a splendid job. Its so nice to see such a large fan base still commited to the best FF game of all time! With that I had a certain question. I actually just discovered the ton of sprites that are listed on this website and I am thinking of restarting 1.3 with some cool sprites for my new generics. Also with the new sprites comes maybe a new class. IE Beatrix as a Holy Knight. So my question is, is it hard to change all the sprites of the starting generics/change squire to another type of starting class?

I see some useful information here on the http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6702.0 Thread...Can I follow this and be able to change some of the sprites around for my generics and add simple new classes?

Very new to this, thanks for the advice!

The thread you linked is excellent information on how to change formation sprites and portraits (that is, the way your character looks in the formation menu and when selecting your units for battle.)  Changing a unit's battle sprite (that is, how the character actually looks on the battlefield) is pretty much as simple as opening your disc image in Shishi, finding the sprite you want to swap and importing the .spr or .bmp file and making sure the sprite's Types are correct (it should say what type the sprite is on the spritesheet, if not assume Type II).

The Beatrix Holy Knight thing is quite a bit more involved, but still relatively simple.  If you want to have Beatrix join your party as a special character you'll have to replace an existing starting character, and if you want her joining your party to make any sense story-wise you'll need to edit the cutscene she joins in, which is event editing and can take a lot of work.

As far as changing Squire to another class, that's not too hard either, you just mess around with it in FFTPatcher.  I vaguely remember some weird bugs where messing with Squire had ramifications for special unit jobs (Agrias, Mustadio, etc.), and you should also remember that anything you do with Squire you'll either have to add to special unit jobs or else it will be unavailable to them (just like how Agrais can never learn Accumulate in the vanilla game, for example.)

Now, all of that said, I've heard that it's never a good idea to layer patches over patches.  If you just change some sprites around that might not be so bad; I don't know myself, never tried it.  But putting an FFTPatcher patch on top of FFT 1.3 is going to cause some huge bugs and glitches.  This means you'll probably need some help from the FFT 1.3 team or someone with a lot more experience than I have.

Thanks for the quick response!

Wow yeah I havnt even downloaded any of the modding tools yet that this site has to offer but Its good to know that I can edit some starting generics sprites into any of the awesome sprites you guys have here on this site! The sprites will be more than enough to make the game even somewhat cooler than it already is. And I would love to work through the Special Starting Jobs for Beatrix IE Holy Knight, and Maybe Dagger/Garnet with Summon/White Magic +MBarrier spell. As far as storyline editing im sure I can use what little I have left in my imagination to figure out that the new characters/sprites I add have some type of backstory. lol

Do you think that simply changing the sprites of generics in 1.3 could lead me into some main issues or is it just the fact that editing major cutscenes or changing the entire squire class as a whole will require some help from the 1.3 team? That being said, can I just change the certain sprites starting classes without changing squires to everyone else? IE Mustadio/Agrias with different movesets rather than "Basic Skill"? Thanks again!

I'm fairly certain that changing the sprites on your disc image wouldn't cause any major glitches.  At worst I think you'd see a few graphical errors with special poses during cutscenes; for example, if you change the thief sprite, then the cutscene in Dorter at the start of Chapter 2 where the thief throws his hat on the ground and curses Gafgarion looks all wonky.  It can be fixed, but it's very complicated and time-consuming to do.  Now, I could be wrong about that.  I don't know how the tools work on a code level, and it's entirely possible that messing with the sprites on an already-patched game could cause the game to crash entirely.  There's only one way to find out.

Any of the other things you mentioned are not recommended on an already-patched game, and would require cooperation from someone who either has access to the base 1.3 materials or knows a hell of a lot more than I do.  They would definitely be possible if you were just patching the vanilla game, but patching a disc image that has already been patched with FFT 1.3 is almost guaranteed to cause bugs that range from weird to showstopping.  No promises on any of that.

And whatever you do or change, for the love of God, back up your files first.  Patch changes are irrevocable, so if you screw up you had better had a blank backup to work off of.

You should be fine editing the sprites. I did a run of 1.3 (or tried to, damn you chapter 2!) with custom sprites once.

I also enjoyed this 

Quote from: Shrikesnest on April 25, 2013, 11:50:01 am
And whatever you do or change, for the love of God, back up your files first.  Patch changes are irrevocable, so if you screw up you had better had a blank backup to work off of.

because it's so true.