Final Fantasy Hacktics

as zozma said its not possible RIGHT now for this forum because we dont know how to
  but i messaged the guy from that video and he never responded

Quote from: "Sen"But this video shows that even in the formation screen it is still present there the sprite and also the portrait.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=y_ZzdBjQnug

You know how seriously messed up all that looks? lol ... his knights turned into ninjas when they attacked. I mean, he obviously knows something, but not enough for it to be crisp and clean like whoever made the editor was trying to do. Chances are, we may even know how to do that without knowing we do .. it just hasn't occured to anyone because it'd be all glitchy or something.

As cool as that one, I'd rather it not look all glitchy in my game, thanks. xD I'll admit that is very talented of him though.. he probably used raw Hex Editing or Gameshark Codes. I'm sure someone here will figure it out eventually. ^_^

I thought I remember Zodiac once mentioning that he did know how to do this. I obviously could be wrong though.

He just replaced a currently existing generic job (I haven't seen the video though).

If his unit turns back to what it was previously on attacking, that means he didn't use shishi sprite editor.  

All we have to do is take the corresponding sprite in UNIT.BIN and change it. I have never done this tough, as I don't have a program to do that and manually would be a real pain.

that would be a cakewalk for me if i only had a way to extract and reinsert the unit spritesheet.... from what i hear tho, it wouldn't be possible to add in every single npc to that sheet tho. from what i hear there is exactly one for every character thats ever seen in the menu. that also means for example how gafgarion has two sprites, both of them access the same single menu sprite

I imagine that shi shi should be able to edit the Unit.bin sprites without much trouble. I doubt that Square would go to the trouble (and extra production time) to encode the unit sprite differently than the battle ones. It should just be a matter of finding their offsets in the unit file, but I figure only melon knows for sure.

Simon's in there, as well as two other Priest and a pigtailed little girl. Those are the only ones not used and only Simon is easily accessible for your party. We'd have to modify the links somehow to use the rest.

yeah and as for the pig tailed girl, it looks like whatever it was was in the pre stages of being drawn. but i plan to add teta in so since its linked to her already....

Not sure I understand half of what's going on, but if guys figure an easy way for me to edit in my Heavenly & Chaos Knights into the formation screen and battle set-up, I'll be extremely grateful. ^_^

im sure in time it will be available to us... with the rise of such a great sprite editor the demand for that has increased drastically.....

Just so everyone can see what is being discussed now here is what the UNIT.BIN file looks like. This is where the sprites in the formation and party screen are taken from. The palette I am using here is for the mysterious pigtailed girl who as far as I know doesn't appear anywhere else (second row down near the middle). It is pretty cool and that is how she is supposed to look, so apparently she may be of the same race as Rafa and Malak. It is also interesting that one of the Zodiac monsters is also in here, when there is no reason for that unless he was to join your party.

wow, youd almost need a second sheet if you inteded to make every special appear correctly....

well provided that you correct the pigtail girl to look like teta who shes assigned to (i would because i intend to make her obtainable later) then you have like 3 other sprites here that i havent seen assigned to anyone except the young priest assigned to alma....

and IF you assign celia and lede to the dancer sprite that makes 2 less specials that look super glitchy...... one of the sprites looks like zalmo, is that one even linked to him correctly? i dont recall that... and then there is serpentarius... what the heck is he doing there? i mean i already knew he had a menu sprite but why? at any rate, one step in the right direction would be to have a way to assign which sprite each character is linked to in the first place. well i see possability to add in at least 3 new specials, and more if you intend to leave a few story characters that never join or are never seen in menu, out... like olan or balmafula... sigh and this thing doesnt look any larger than a normal sprite sheet. hmm also ultima demons never join and if you got rid of bybilos as a party memeber then nothing using the apanda sprite would be needed in menu either.

and Lydyn if your characters look like new color palette bard and dancer you could probably find a way to change their palettes to match...

Well I think there are quite a few you could technically write over, if you are counting the ones that never appear in the formation or party screen normally.

You could use Alma and the princess, because neither of them appear there I believe. All four of the weird priests. Oran/Olan, because he never joins your party or is a guest of your party, he is just a guest in some of the battles. Pigtail girl. Plus Serpentarius. And if a project gets rid of an original job for a new one, then they can just put the new party sprite there as well. So there is some wiggle room here.

If you want every character that already has a battle sprite to be playable then obviously not all those options are viable.

-Edit- OMG look! it works it actually works, you can rename UNIT.BIN as
"UNIT.SPR" and open it in shimsham sprite editor! (has no color palette BUT you can save changes and put it back in.

just do this: Open the edior, open the unit file renamed as a spr file
save its color palette and then import the color palette of the character u want to put in. paste it with the exact same colors there and then import the origional unit.bin color palette (which is all black) and save and import!

now all we need is a way to assign which sprite uses which secion of this sprite sheet

in this screenshot i changed pigtails girl into the matching battle sprite which is really teta. i used my snes pal to change the 17th color palette to match the change.

now would this work well in the job change wheel!? but i wonder if you could extend the sheet.

Hmm, which character is the odd colored Ramza? Also is there any hope to add in Zalbag or Dycedarg, Funeral even? Last I checked they each have a plain Ramza sprite.

this change also applies to the job wheel, it uses the same image

the odd colored ramza is Lede, actually thats my full version of teta using the duplicate lede sprite slot. there IS a chance of adding in characters like funeral or zalbag, BUT we have to find a way to edit which section of this image each character uses. obviously those characters never had an assignment since they werent used, therefore im guessing the value is "00" telling the game to display ramza's sprite. as for the portraits? well thats another story, but they would also require a value change to display the correct picture.

not only that, but this sprite editor can also open eventchr.bin AND effect files by using the same method... unfortunately youll only be able to see a spritesheet sized portion.

AWESOME

IF more work is done on this editor or perhaps a separate one based off of it is made, then it may be possible in the future to edit spell effect files. it can open them now actually if you rename them as .spr or .sp2 but they are still compressed i tried an experiment with moogle summons, i took the image, and flipped mogs picture upside down and saved everything back in.. sigh doesnt work like the unit.bin did tho and the game froze.

You don't need to rename it; just type the name of the file in the Open file prompt.