Mato Projects (mostly FF4/6 stuff)

[Grimoire LD]

FFIV is obtuse at times and this is one of them.

Before I started modding FFIV I always thought the 0x5 and all of that actually meant that the defense stat itself was being multiplied, but it means something Completely different, compared to how Attack Multipliers are calculated.

0x means the amount of times that your evasion will be taken into account to evade an attack. It's been a while so this might be wrong, Every 8 Agility will increase your Defense multiplier by 1 from there. This is how they balanced it so Edge would be an evasive fellow, while making sure the tanks (Cecil/Kain) have some actual ability to shrug off *some* damage. This is why Agility is king in FFIV, it increases your Attack/Defense/Speed/Evasion, all from one stat. You will notice in FFIV even Tellah starts with 8 Agility, hence he has one multiplier. However Rydia and Porom do not have enough Agility to reach even 1 defense multiplier and it looks the same with Firion there (great transfer of his portrait by the way, to the hack creator!)

For Magic Defense Multiplier is less straight forward. Tellah starts with x1, which implies that you need 16/Wisdom&Will to have a Magic Defense Multiplier, but its not so simple. it has to be 32 of either or both stats. So say if you have 16 Wisdom+Will you will have x1. If you have 48 Wisdom and 32 Will, you will have x2, because you haven't reached the new threshold of 96 to reach x3 Magic Evasion multipliers.

[reconstructingmana]

I was always a fan of the original font.  It seems that whenever a script is hacked, the first thing to happen is a new font. 

[Spooniest]

I was always a fan of the original font.  It seems that whenever a script is hacked, the first thing to happen is a new font.

I think that's because replacing a font is one of the simplest tasks of any that this particular hobby entails. Next step up is editing the pallette.

There was a time (it might still be true honestly) when pallette-only and font-only mods were not actually allowed on this site, for that reason, I think?

[PowerPanda]

Mato, the FF2c hack really intrigues me. When I finish my FF6 project, I'd be willing to put in some work on this. Would you want someone to come along and work on the town/dungeon maps?

[Tomato]

I was always a fan of the original font.  It seems that whenever a script is hacked, the first thing to happen is a new font.

Yeah, I did it purposely here, I wanted it to have a different feel from FF4 and for screenshots of it to stand out from screenshots of FF4. Otherwise the hack would've used the original Japanese version's English font, which would still be considered a "new font" in most players' eyes outside of Japan.

Mato, the FF2c hack really intrigues me. When I finish my FF6 project, I'd be willing to put in some work on this. Would you want someone to come along and work on the town/dungeon maps?

My plan is to release my translation, fix any tiny bugs afterwards, and then let others modify it further on their own if they want. I kind of like the creative weirdness that comes from all the re-used caves, towns, etc. but I can see how recreating all the original FF2 ones would be really fun too. I also feel the game could REALLY use the original NES enemy FF2 graphics touched up to look like they fit with FF4. Someone tried to do it but with GBA sprites, and it feels out of place to me:

[Grimoire LD]

I don't know... I think those GBA sprites look pretty great!

Also this fellow/lady chose Leonora (the best new character from FFIV:TAY) as a holdover party member, so they earn points from me for that alone.

[PowerPanda]

I mean, if you have a 5th character, wouldn't it just make sense for Leila to stick with you? Or maybe someone could upgrade Paul to be finally playable. 

[Tomato]

I don't know... I think those GBA sprites look pretty great!

Yeah, it's pretty hit or miss, I think the GBA sprites without outlines and/or gradient shading are kinda weird, but that's just me. I'm hoping other hackers will take this initial FF2 remake even further/in diff directions though 

Also, thanks for the stats explanation, that's some complicated stuff I never realized even after playing it a ton back in the day.

I mean, if you have a 5th character, wouldn't it just make sense for Leila to stick with you? Or maybe someone could upgrade Paul to be finally playable. 

Actually, you can freely switch the 5th party member between Leila, Leonora, Minwu, and Gordon (maybe another?) near the end of the game.
June 01, 2020, 05:53:25 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
I'm doing menu stuff right now and I noticed a string in the Japanese version that I'm not sure I've seen used before. In the English FF2 ROM it's translated here as "FAILED". There's also a string in there that says "Recover HP" that I'm not sure I've seen:



Does anyone know what these are, when they occur, etc.? They're right there among strings that get used when you use items/magic on people outside of battle, but I don't know how to trigger them.

[KillerBob]

Does anyone know what these are, when they occur, etc.? They're right there among strings that get used when you use items/magic on people outside of battle, but I don't know how to trigger them.

Noticed these myself when doing stuff for "the cutting room floor" page. That particular ＨＰを　かいふくします/"Recover HP." message is definitely unused. And I'm pretty sure that うまくいかないようです/"Failed......" string is also one of those unused item menu strings. もちものがいっぱいですけ/"Items full." is another one, I think. If I recall correctly, the final game has an audio cue instead.

[reconstructingmana]

I think that's because replacing a font is one of the simplest tasks of any that this particular hobby entails. Next step up is editing the pallette.

There was a time (it might still be true honestly) when pallette-only and font-only mods were not actually allowed on this site, for that reason, I think?

Do you feel that using original fonts comes off as "amateurish"?  For Secret of Mana, I like the using the idea of the original font for nostalgia, and it seems to get the job done well enough. 

My plan is to release my translation, fix any tiny bugs afterwards, and then let others modify it further on their own if they want. I kind of like the creative weirdness that comes from all the re-used caves, towns, etc. but I can see how recreating all the original FF2 ones would be really fun too. I also feel the game could REALLY use the original NES enemy FF2 graphics touched up to look like they fit with FF4.

I will second that I am greatly looking forward to this too!

[Spooniest]

Do you feel that using original fonts comes off as "amateurish"?  For Secret of Mana, I like the using the idea of the original font for nostalgia, and it seems to get the job done well enough.

Quite the opposite. Even if the font the original game had wasn't the greatest, it's better to have something familiar that worked the first time (mostly anyway) than to experiment with weird stuff needlessly. One of those 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' kind of things.

And yeah I learned this lesson the hard way, myself, on my very first submission to the site. Not telling, though.

[Tomato]

I want to add a single sign to a room/map (the tower of wish/prayer room in standard ff4) but am having a very hard time finding any documentation on the relevant data. I could swear I saw something about NPC text placement/assignment in one of the zillion docs several years ago but I can't find it anymore. Does anyone know where I can learn more about this stuff?

[Grimoire LD]

Hmm, that should be well within the power of FF4ks...(remembers it's Japanese version.) Nevermind.

There is another editor which might help, maybe... Everything's editor.

https://everything8215.github.io/ff6tools/ff6tools.html

Despite the name, it actually has a lot of FF support and there is one for the FFIV Japanese version, it should have most of the bells and whistles of FF4kster. I think.

[Tomato]

Yeah, I had actually tried to use ff4kster to modify an English ROM so I could pinpoint which bytes were being changed when I made a simple NPC-related change... but then a file comparison showed it changed like 5000 bytes

I'm more interested in the underlying data so I don't need to rely on tools, so I also consulted the source code for ff4kster, but it's not well documented and for some reason the relevant addresses it references didn't get hit by any reads, even after converting between address formats.

The Javascript code in the FF6Tools page looks promising though, thanks!
June 03, 2020, 06:56:43 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
I'm playing around with FF6Tools now and it actually loads the Japanese FF2 remake without any trouble at all. I'm still unsure of what to do though - I can't seem to find any way to move NPCs, add new/move existing entries, or anything else using this editor.

[Grimoire LD]

Ah, did you click on Triggers? If you go to Triggers, then the map editing function becomes a targeting function. You can click on an NPC, see which event is attached to them and edit the text all from there. It's really convenient!

[Tomato]

Ooh, thanks, that helped a ton!

I got my new thing hooked up and working, except I ran into two problems:

• The prayer room tileset doesn't have the poster/note tile in it, ack
• I need to find a spare NPC that I can ditch, but there's no easy way to tell if any NPC entries are unused in the hack, and if so, which ones are unused

Things are progressing nicely otherwise. Another thing I want to add is an intro screen explaining what the original Japanese hack is + tries to do, but that's another technical hurdle for another time.

[Vanya]

Late to the party, but...
I think the GBA enemy graphics are a good base, but they do need some finagling to match the style of the rest of the game batter.
Conversely, maybe it would be worth it to port over some of the GBA graphics for the rest of the game?

Still love the whole Idea of this hack. I gush for it! :GUSH: :GUSH: :GUSH:

[Tomato]

Say, has anyone ever made an "overworld music doesn't start over from the beginning after a battle" hack? I'm doing some testing now and it's something I really wish the game had, especially when the song is so long and good.

[Grimoire LD]

I don't think that trend started until FFVI, I have never heard of a hack for that, but in theory it should be as simple as making the game remember the point in the sequence it was when a battle began. Unfortunately music programming is gobbledygook to me. However Chillyfeez may know a thing about it.

[Tomato]

I'm getting really close to finishing this finally. I need some help again though - this time I want an 8x8 treasure chest icon, but I'm not happy with the one I quickly made:



(The colors in the image above are the only ones available)

Can anyone help? I can hack bits but I can't draw at all