#115458 - FinalFanOfTacticsAdvance - Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:12 am
Hello everyone. I've decided to clear the bad name of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I know the story line sucks, the characters act like children (actually they are but thats lame), and there are limited choices for you to make. The script writers didn't realize that a tactical game would be played by people who wore boxers instead of diapers, but the programmers did. They created an awesome battle system, and I'm here to clean up FFTA's mess they call a story.
My current needs are simple. I have read the important parts of the Sticky topic, so I know I need some C++. I know a little bit about C++, I can read most of it but can't really write it. I'm not really doing anything drastic as of yet, just changing some numbers around.
What do I do first? I'm going to want to add some equipment / monsters / missions / etc., so I'll have to expand the rom right? Move data, make sure the pointers repoint to the same thing right? (This is what I've gathered from things I've read) Okay, so is there a program for this or will I have to do it on my own? If I do do it on my own, how will I know which ones are pointers and where they point? A tutorial would be nice, I'm going to search right now.
I'm also going to modify the preview's text and possibly the characters movements in the preiews, if I prove compentent enough. This is mostly an experiment to keep me entertained, but I have enough patience to stick it through if people show me where to go.
Thank you all.
_________________
Current Project: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Hack (Name Pending)
Last edited by FinalFanOfTacticsAdvance on Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:53 am; edited 1 time in total
#115460 - tepples - Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:15 am
Have you made hello world on a PC yet? What about on a GBA? Were you planning on making your own tactics game from scratch or making a derivative from Square's copyrighted work?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#115461 - FinalFanOfTacticsAdvance - Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:17 am
wow that was fast, I've done the hello world thing and much more, but not on a gameboy. And yes I'll be editing the real game, but I'm not going to distribute it, it's just for me. And I own it so it's fine right?
edit* I mean I own the actual game Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, I bought it a while ago, but have sinse got bored with the litmited ending.
_________________
Current Project: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Hack (Name Pending)
#115477 - kusma - Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:18 am
First of all, tampering with games without having the source code is extremely difficult, I'd even say practically impossible when the goal is a big thing such as the story.
Secondly, ROM-hacking is not the scope of this forum, and for legal reasons should be kept away from here. We don't want to give Nintendo a reason to close us down.
#115492 - FinalFanOfTacticsAdvance - Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:14 pm
okay, thank you anyway. I shall ask around another site or something.
_________________
Current Project: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Hack (Name Pending)
#115501 - keldon - Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:54 pm
You will be very disappointed; hacking a game takes a lot of knowledge of development to achieve. You don't just randomly throw 'hack bolts' at a game, you have to spend hours upon weeks to get anything meaningful - and for your scale you will need a deeper understanding of the functionality.
#115508 - Lynx - Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:20 pm
Heh, yeah.. Unless you just want to change the word "sword" to "right" or something like that, good luck actually changing the story.
_________________
NDS Homebrew Roms & Reviews
#115512 - Miked0801 - Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:23 pm
And 'sword' to 'right' won't work if they compressed the text (which many developers do.)
#115513 - keldon - Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:29 pm
Well pokemon red right up to gold wasn't that difficult to change the text from japanese to english. In fact quite a few gameboy games that were japanese only have been translated; and pokemon was translated before it even came to England!
#115525 - Firon - Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:15 pm
Text compression was mostly found on SNES games, and not all of them had it. GBA games have much more space available so funky compression algorithms aren't quite so necessary.
#115526 - Miked0801 - Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:16 pm
A simple Huffman compress gives 33% compression for almost no overhead. People would be silly not to do it for large amounts of text.
#115528 - Firon - Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:19 pm
The GBA supports LZ77 and Huffman in hardware, doesn't it? I guess games probably make use of it...
#115538 - Lynx - Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:16 am
I just remember hex editing my player files back in the day to see what would happen.. and watching a chair do 200 points of damage vs a sword which would do 4..
Even if you could easily change the text, your not really changing the story, as the progression within the game would still be the same.
_________________
NDS Homebrew Roms & Reviews
#115654 - FinalFanOfTacticsAdvance - Thu Jan 18, 2007 5:50 am
Actually, I'm really getting into this and I have some really helpful people (person, lol) helping me. So far we've almost got how to edit the text, and once we've got that figured out we can locate a lot of other stuff. I'm hoping to figure out where the maps are nubmered so I can start editing them very soon. This is going to be a long project indeed, but I seem to have quite a few 'bolts' in my possesion. Hehehe, he just cracked the text for me!
PS I changed the way the main guy looked but his class changed and now he can't walk. Then I hacked over his class change and it didn't work. hmmm... Perplexing.
_________________
Current Project: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Hack (Name Pending)
#115666 - HyperHacker - Thu Jan 18, 2007 7:38 am
| kusma wrote: |
| First of all, tampering with games without having the source code is extremely difficult, I'd even say practically impossible when the goal is a big thing such as the story. |
Difficult? Yes. Impossible? Hardly. Look for the next beta release of my Pok?mon G/S editor on my web site sometime this/next month.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.
#115683 - kusma - Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:31 am
| HyperHacker wrote: |
| kusma wrote: | | First of all, tampering with games without having the source code is extremely difficult, I'd even say practically impossible when the goal is a big thing such as the story. |
Difficult? Yes. Impossible? Hardly. Look for the next beta release of my Pok?mon G/S editor on my web site sometime this/next month. |
Read that sentence again.
#115697 - HyperHacker - Thu Jan 18, 2007 1:38 pm
I'm just saying while it's no cakewalk, it's not as difficult as you make it out to be. Many people do it.
_________________
I'm a PSP hacker now, but I still <3 DS.
#115704 - kusma - Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:18 pm
| HyperHacker wrote: |
| I'm just saying while it's no cakewalk, it's not as difficult as you make it out to be. Many people do it. |
To a guy who admits not being able to write C++ code, and in the context of the Beginners-forum, I'd say it's quite damn close to impossible to do major changes to the storyline of a game. Especially when he wants to relocate some data and code, to make room for more monsters etc.
Edit: fixed so i'm quoting the right text ;)
#116089 - FinalFanOfTacticsAdvance - Sun Jan 21, 2007 9:30 pm
I've got a friend who helping me and we've almost got the text hacked. We're going to start changing it this week and hopefully the character movement is nearby.
What someone said about the main storyline progression, I'm going to edit the quests so you get them in a different order by changing what quests your required to have taken before you can start one and what location you get as a reward. Then I'll swap out the characters in the fight, and I think they'll switch in preview. Doesn't seem that hard really. They still move around the same in the preview but I can work with that. Probably change it later.
_________________
Current Project: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Hack (Name Pending)