Starting my very first FF6 hack and had some basic questions.

Ahoy ahoy! I plan on posting in the introduction thread, but I wanted to get this out before it all escaped my brain.

I tried this once before with Final Fantasy Tactics, but I hit some pretty major roadblocks and ultimately had to drop the project. I want to do a mod of the game, that much is obvious. I don't think I'm overly ambitious, and I feel like I have a good groundwork for what I want out of it. Two playable characters, maybe a guest or two thrown in. A couple hours of gameplay, maybe a dungeon or two. It's going to be about two DnD characters from an old campaign I was in. Jago, son of the dark dragon, and Zaida, harbringer of the blue age. Mine and my girlfriend's characters respectively.

For those of you interested, here was the first (and only scene) I was able to get working. Obviously art/class name, etc. was all placeholder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lf2P_VRkLw

Anyway, onto bigger things. I have some general ideas for what I want out of this. Those two characters will be the focus. Zaida being a divine/primal type character with a focus on magic, Jago being a rougish, dark magic fellow. I haven't decided if I want them both to learn magic naturally or just Zaida. Jago steals souls, so I'm wondering if it's possible to just allow him to use Magicite to learn magic but not Zaida. One of my first questions is this: If I assign a non-magic ability like a lore or blitz to a piece of magicite, will it show up in the correct menu? That will really help determine what I want to do.

I know I want them both to have a unique command. I'm leaning towards SwdTech for Jago, but I haven't decided what for Zaida. Maybe even using SwdTech and renaming it Pray, or Prayer or something. The soulstealing idea I can go in a lot of directions with. Giving him a set of accessories only he can equip and making them monster drops, giving him the only access to magicite, or giving him the throw command and just making souls the only throwable items. I'm still at a pretty big loss for what to do with Zaida though while keeping her interesting. So in essence, Jago would be something like Fight, SwdTech, ????, Item. Zaida would be Fight, Magic, ????, Item. It's all a matter of figuring out the best methods of staying true to their characters while also being fun to play.

A couple of other problems are I'm really not sure how to program events into this game. That one in the video above took about a month of work because I had to learn everything from the ground up. I also have no idea how to edit maps. And I'm a terrible spriter. Art is my biggest weak point. I tried for about an hour to make a single sprite today, and I just couldn't even do it. I can't art.

Anyway, that's my giant rant about what I need out of life. Any advice, education, or encouragement would be really appreciated.

Welcome Ark!

Editing maps is actually reasonably easy, as there is a tool for map editing. You can find the LE in the Tools section.

I don't believe that you will be able to allow Espers to teach skills other than Magic to characters without some deep ASM, unfortunately.

The first thing that popped into my head when it came to soul-stealing was to give Jago an attack with a Ragnarokish effect. It could transform enemies into unique Relics (as you mentioned) that only he can equip. Just an idea if you feel like rolling with that.

Event editing requires the Hex Editor, but there is a clear tutorial in this thread:

https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/showth...hp?tid=802


Since you were able to make an event in FFT, I suspect that you should be able to do this as well.

I can't help much with the spriting, as that's not really my forte. However, you can use the vanilla sprites as placeholders for the moment. If you get to the point where changing the sprites over is pretty much all you have left to do, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody would be willing to take a request at that point to help you out (if you can't do it yourself with some help).

Good luck!

For events, I suggest you get your hands on the event commands list and event dump document, both available on Imzogelmo's site. Check the links section for more detail.

If I assign a non-magic ability like a lore or blitz to a piece of magicite, will it show up in the correct menu? That will really help determine what I want to do.

As it stands now, definitely not; the esper system is set up only to accommodate the 54-spell magic system. That said, it's theoretically feasible to do what you're thinking of, especially if you're only looking at two playable characters -- you're going to need some additional RAM to store 'percentage learned' for the other abilities, but you free up 54 bytes of RAM for each character not learning magic. (Although, come to think, there's probably enough unused SRAM to accommodate learning each Lore... Hmm. I'd have to sit down and actually look at numbers, but this miiiiight be workable with existing unused SRAM...)

The complicated part will be the coding to set various bits (in the 'SwdTech/Blitz/Lore learned' byte) when a given byte reaches 100%. Complicated, but by no means impossible.

Hey guys. Sorry for the massive post and then disappearance. Life decided it had some curveballs it wanted to throw at me, and I had to deal with that.

Lockirby2, that's a great resource. Thanks a lot. The videos are a touch hard to follow along with, but it's 100% better than being left in the dark. I'll probably pour over a few of those tonight. And I absoluetly love the idea of a Ragnarok effect. The first thing that jumps out to mind is finding a way to make it only work on bosses, and then making those relics alter his skillset ala Gem Box or Offering. The idea of a Ragnarok effect is certainly a flavorful way of exploring his abilities, and I'd love to build off of that. Kudos.

Madsiur, thanks for the reference. I'll look into that. I'm still largely unfamiliar with event editing in FF6, and even FFTactics. Truth be told I'm not much of a programmer, but I'm willing to learn.

GrayShadows, rats. Ah well. I didn't think it would be, but one can dream. I'll probably just alter an existing skillset or 2 and give it to them via levels. I may still explore Magicite as an idea. So how does this sound: Zaida learns magic via leveling up, Jago learns it via Magicite? Would it be possible to lock Zaida out of the Esper menu but not Jago, but still allow her to learn spells via leveling? I want them both to be different, but equally fulfilling to grow as characters.

Edit: I guess a quick and dirty way to do it would be to create a bunch of Jago0only equipment like the Thunder Shield and Imp Equipment that teaches magic when equipped, but that just seems cheesy.

Would it be possible to lock Zaida out of the Esper menu but not Jago, but still allow her to learn spells via leveling? I want them both to be different, but equally fulfilling to grow as characters.

Absolutely! That's actually really easy, because functionality's already built into the game to lock out the Esper menu -- it's used for Gogo. And the code to learn spells via levelling is completely unrelated to learning it from espers, so there's no conflict there at all.

Awesome. I'm glad at least one thing will be easy to do. So Jago is looking like his commands will be SwdTech and Magic, but he won't learn anything naturally. It'll all be souls, or Magicite. I'll spruce up the SwdTech abilities to be niftier.

And I think I had a stroke of genius for Zaida, but again I dunno how difficult it will be to implement. Dance is a decidedly naturey command, and Zaida was a servent of the primal god Melora. How about chaging it so instead of giving a berserk type effect it's just a one shot move? Meaning everytime you dance you get a different effect, but maintain control after that turn? And Zaida could learn new dances the same way Mog does currently. This gives both characters 2 growth mechanics: 1 via leveling, and 1 via exploration and interatcion with the environment.

Edit: I think I'm going to go in both directions with Jago. Magicite for his magic, and then also Relics he can obtain by transforming monsters. I haven't decided if they will be boss-only, or from regular monsters. The latter would obviously be more work, but I feel like the former would be a huge pain to balance, and maybe impossible to.

Okay, so at this point I think I'll just be using this to get my ideas out. I'm still pretty nervous about delving in, since I'll essentially be tearing up the story, and putting in my own instead. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is probably going to be fairly ambitious, and I'm worried that I'm getting in over my head for a first time hack. But the (very) rough storyboard is gonna go something like this:
Jago and Zaida get plopped into another world. Not Final Fantay 6's world per se, mind you, but possibly if I can make it interesting enough. They have to concentrate on getting back home. As I mentioned in my initial post, I'm not sure how much content I want to cram into this, or how much would be appropriate. I feel like with the ideas I had involving magicite and leveling that I really want a chance to explore, but I'm petrified of biting off more than I can chew. And I haven't had much of a chance to get my hands dirty with the actual modding yet. I need to watch those videos. Speaking of which, is there a written guide that would be possible to follow? Or is it only the videos at this moment in time? I tend to do a little better when I can go at my own pace and reread things and such. Of course I'll make due either way.
So Jago and Zaida get dropped into this strange world when an experiment involving a rune gate went haywire. This is a world where everything is still alive (they come from a desert world where water and plant life is worth more than gold) and metal (same as the water and plant life). Regardless, they have unfinished business so they can't stay in this apparent paradise. They learn of some ancient magic that's very similar to the rune magic back in their world, and set off exploring the ruins to try and use this magic to go home. I'm not sure how much time this should take, or how roundabout it should be. But I'm talking in circles at this point.
So how much is too much for a first timer like myself?

Speaking of which, is there a written guide that would be possible to follow? Or is it only the videos at this moment in time? I tend to do a little better when I can go at my own pace and reread things and such. Of course I'll make due either way.

Are you talking about events? There's a written document made by xJCSx available here: https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/showth...hp?tid=795

I've never read it so how don't know how reliable it is...

Yeah, that's perfect. Well, it might be. I'm actually at work so I can't read the document right now, but it's at least something to look at when I get home. I read through a bit of the thread, and it seemd like it generally garnered positive reviews, so that makes me feel confident that I'll be able to follow along.