Allowing monsters to equip items and use jp to learn skills.

[Philogosten]

Well basically I am trying to figure out how to do that but I hit a dead end. I thought it sucked that monsters just came with their skills all learned and could not equip any items. Now I don't plan to try to allow chocobos to use swords or something silly like that. I would set their class in fftpatcher to not allow any equips. However the ones with more humanoid shapes I would like to make able to equip armor. However that is only secondary. Mainly I want all monsters to have to learn skills the same way as humans do. This way all variants of the same monster type can learn the skills of the other types with jp they earn.

So if anyone can tell me how to do that then I will do all the grunt work and release it for free use to the community. (Plus it will help me work more on my FFT overhaul which I also plan to release once it is done)

[Atma]

I wonder if you gave a human job a monster sprite if it would work.  I'm guessing MON type sprites would change the character from a human to a monster, tho.  Maybe some creative monster sprite pasted into a human TYPE 1 OR 2 would work.  Might try that when I get some time...

[Philogosten]

Well that probably would work but there are not a lot of empty human sprites...or a lot of empty sprites in total

[Atma]

afaik you can just change they type from MON to TYPE 1 or 2 and use that slot..  So long as you don't mind losing the original monster.  This would of course mean they won't self breed and won't trigger the Monter Skill support.  If you've seen the skeleton sprite that was finished as a human, that's essentially what I'm talking about.  This method can also alter which attack it could use.  Empty would use fist animation, could use bowgun and make a projectile attack (like a spit or throw attack).  Worst thing is the size of the sprite.  Chocobos, for example won't fit the frames for a human.
I was actually already thinking of changing the chocobo to the dragon sprite so you can use dragon skills on it (would lose the mounting option).

[Choto]

If only it were that simple... I actually wanted to equip monster with some items too. There is scattered hardcoding all over the game though. It's not impossible... it's probably about as hard as making Mime a normal job.. but apparently square really didn't want monster to have items. In regards to job changes/JP learning... you would have to create a new job wheel and/or job list for monsters. Then you'd have to figure out the side-effects like spillover JP.

There may be some crafty ways to get around it though. If you had a small number of jobs, you could make a couple of exclusive jobs that only humanoids can use, but you'd be severely limited in quantity.

If you learn how to ASM though, you could theoretically accomplish all of the above.

[Kaedre]

The main problem for giving items to monsters are the weapons: Only type 1 and type 2 sprites allows the correct attack animation/weapon display in battle.

So, first of all (and inevitably), you need new sprites versions for all humanoids monsters: goblins, skeletons, squidlarkins, lamias, minotaurs, etc. (And i think the minotaur is too big for a type 1 or 2 spritesheet)

Other than that, Byblos is the only example that comes to my mind of an invitable monster with a human-like skillset.
So modders maybe can create and ASM based on him (or it?), like Xifanie's hack that uses the squire skillset for overwrite Charge, Throw, etc. but using Byblos job to overwrite goblin, squid, etc.

Of course, the latter is only theoretical, and much more easy to say than to do it.

[Philogosten]

Well weapons sure I can see the issue with the sprites but armor should not be a problem. Neither would monsters using jp to learn their skills. Just got to find out how to remove whatever is keeping monsters jobs to auto learn all their skills and remove what keeps them from getting equipment. From there it should be easy since then just allow them to equip armor and equipment like capes for the skeletons.

[Atma]

So, first of all (and inevitably), you need new sprites versions for all humanoids monsters: goblins, skeletons, squidlarkins, lamias, minotaurs, etc. (And i think the minotaur is too big for a type 1 or 2 spritesheet)

Indeed.  My idea would require making a new sheet for the monster.  It has to fit the frames, which will limit which monsters this method works for.  However, with that done the Job is no different than a human's. 
For equipping a weapon, you'd probably edit the weapon sprite to likely just remove it (which of course cuts down on equipable weapon types), but you can alter the animation of it's normal attack.  Like giving a bite animation for bare handed and a fireball or something in place of the bowgun.  You can simply(well, not so simply) draw in the arm section of the sprite sheet to alter a bit of how it looks.  I'd like to test this all out, at least make a Moogle or something.  If I do, I'll definitely post more.
Edit:
Pasted a few frames onto a TYPE 1 sheet.  Could be pretty tedious.  To do it well, I'd probably have to take the arms out of the walking animation (or do a lot more work on the arm frames).  It's definitely gonna need some custom frames and whatever weapon animation I want to use would need to be added.  I guess the more complex you want the sprite/character, the more complete the sheet would have to be.  If you just want 1 attack frame and 1 casting type frame, it's not too bad.  Less humanoid could be easier, or much tougher.  So, this method is a possibility but not an easy one.  This is more tedious than an ASM solution might be, but an improvement over a regular MON if it fits on the sheet.

[Kaedre]

Well, like i said before, with new sprite versions (that includes separated arms frames) the weapon display doesn't means any problem.

Also, with a human job ID, you can equip items, gain Jp and learn action/R/S/M skills. But...
- You no more could be targeted be "monster hit" formulas.
- No more breed.
-"Hit oposite gender" doesn't counts you like unisex (because now you are male or female)
- You can acces to all humans jobs (Need a job wheel modification to avoid this, and sacrifice the slots designed for regular classes)
- And a bunch of things that don't come to my mind right now.

[Atma]

I forgot about some of those issues.  It pretty much creates more problems than it fixes.  Guess it comes back to an asm method to make this possible.