Starting a hobby hack

[tkul]

So I've been playing Final Fantasy tactics pretty much yearly since it came out, it's been sort of a ritual to play through each summer with a buddy of mine. A while back I found the 1.3 insanely derpy patch and started playing around with and it's got me interested in playing with the patcher tools that are available for FFT.   I've done some playing here and there just seeing how things work, changing skillsets, growths, item stats just basic stuff and I'm ready to start working on a little more complicated patch as hobby. What I'd like to do is rework the special characters to make them actually special in flavor not just because they're stronger than the generic classes. In order to do that though I'm going to need to be able to modify the names and descriptions of classes, abilities, and skill sets and once I get really ambitious change some fomulae around. I've found how to move abilities into other skill sets, and I've mapped out some of the characters base class and skill set assignments but I'm not sure how those translate into FFTacTextEditor and was wondering if anyone had a listing that paired the entry in FFTacTextEditor to its entry in FFTPatcher.  For example there are 6 entries for squire in patcher which squire is which in the FFTTacText Editor? I can take some time playing with it and try to get them mapped but I figured it'd be easier to ask if anyone else ahs done the grunt work yet.







A brief outline of what I'm planning on doing would be -
Remove Gained JP Up
Remove Walk JP Up
Remove Walk XP up
Remove Steal XP
Innate Weapon Guard on every character
Swap Equip Sword for Equip axe on all the special sword skills characters
Swap Equip Gun for Equip axe on Engineer
Move Monster Skill to the Mediator
Change the mediator to be more of a Blue Mage with a listing of monster abilities he can learn on hit + invite, and Charm
Add MP values to the sword skills (Holy,Dark, Divine, All) in line with the 1.3 patch
Innate Half MP on the sword skill users base classes (to encourage using their base classes)
Change Divine Sword Skill to not require equipment (already an ASM in TorgASM for this)
Change All Sword Skill (orlandu) to not have every skill (to make the specialists like Meliadoul and Agrias better in their focus)
Expand Dark Knight skill set in line with 1.3
Change Rad to be a Dark Knight in chapter 2 so you get to keep one for the game.
Change Ramza, Delita, and Algus's base classes to not be Squire, thinking Cadet for Algus and Delita (with the same skill set to free up a skillset slot) and Sion for Ramza in Chapter 1, Outcast in Chapter 2, Redeemer in Chapter 4 (with new skill sets based on buffing allies/debuffing enemies/combination of the two respectively)

[Jumza]

The Job list in FFTacText is identical to the job list found in the FFTPatcher, I believe the first 3 are Ramza, then Delita, then Algus, then farther down the list is the generic squire.
Also, new project ideas should go in the new projects part of the forum if you want feedback on your new patch ideas.

These all look like good changes anyway, except maybe...

Rad as a dark knight? Even if you are adding MP costs to swordskills It would be pretty overpowered still (but fun to play as )
Algus wasn't a Cadet himself, so maybe think of another name for his job class.

[tkul]

Next question would be is there any way to make the jump skills on dragoons lock on like spells. I'd like to give the dragoons an actual skill set with jump being one skill with a range of 4 and unlimited verticle tolerance. I know the actual jump skill set is hard coded and will need to be replaced but how would you make a single jump skill that has the same sort of mechanics plus locking onto the target

[Choto]

If you make a single skill with follow target flagged, and then go to the animations tab and mimic the jump skills... it should work? Not sure though.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

No it won't.  The character won't "Jump" while the ability is charging and may end up glitched above the screen after it finishes casting.

You can't make a single "Jump" Ability that is a 100% recreation of the original move in all of its unique mechanics.