Final Fantasy IX: Alternate Fantasy

[Tirlititi]

Hi there!

Final Fantasy IX: Alternate Fantasy is a mod aiming to increase the difficulty and, above all, to give a new fresh experience of FF9 for those who already know the game well.
In the new version you can also recruit Beatrix in the party.

Download/Install:

Since v6.0, Alternate Fantasy must be installed using Memoria's Mod Manager.

Install or update Memoria by downloading and running Memoria.Patcher.exe from its Github:
┌─────────────────────┐
§ Memoria Engine mod[github.com] §
└─────────────────────┘

Note that, for now, Alternate Fantasy must have 'priority' over the Moguri mod if you use both of them.

Below are a couple of screenshots detailing the installation process step by step.

https://i.imgur.com/HgqDJ0W.png
Download and run Memoria.Patcher.exe

https://i.imgur.com/ABxhce9.png
Hopefully the patching process goes fine
If your game is not installed in the standard Steam directory, or in a external hard drive, try moving the patcher to your game directory before running it

https://i.imgur.com/X2Qsqfk.png
When launching the game, the "Install Mods" button opens Memoria's Mod Manager

https://i.imgur.com/tRuVxJ1.png
Download "Alternate Fantasy" from the catalog

https://i.imgur.com/OrYHYTK.png
Don't forget to activate it after installation
In most situations, the Moguri Mod should be moved to the bottom of the list (this is because Moguri Mod 8.3.0.0 packs a couple of assets that are duplicates of the game's default assets; placing it at the bottom has no impact or very small impacts on Moguri's features)

The mod fully works in any of the official languages of the game: English, Japanese (thanks to Moldsax), German (thanks to DSpecht), French, Spanish (thanks to link2015z) and Italian (thanks to TheFF8fan and Argon).

Also, if you use Hades Workshop, the HWS source file can be downloaded from my dropbox folder[www.dropbox.com] (it's in the archive "AF and PCP source files.zip").

What are the modifications?

A lot of them. Most are gameplay related but a few of them are also about the screenplay. There are two kinds of scenario-related changes:
1) A few dialogs that were suppressed during the game's development are put back in this mod. It includes the dialogs from the "Hidden Dialogs" patch plus a few others for which only the texts were kept.
2) As Beatrix can be permanently recruited after getting the airship (optional), cutscenes are changed from this point onward to include Beatrix in them.

Here is a list of the dialogs suppressed by the developpers and put back:
• An extra dialog between Puck and Vivi over Alexandria's roofs, unmissable
• A small line in the ATE "Time To Escape", missable
• A few Steiner lines to ask for Magic Sword, unmissable
• An extra line about Vivi's grandpa in front of Ice Cavern, unmissable
• An extended dialog between Steiner and Morrid, unmissable
• An extra ATE in Cleyra's cathedral, missable
• A few lines in Pinnacle Rocks, after the first meeting with Ramuh, unmissable
• An extra minigame in the occupied Linblum Castle, unmissable
• A couple of lines in the base level of the occupied Linblum Castle, unmissable
• A couple of lines at the Dragon's gate right after, missable
• A couple of lines to setup a rescue plan with Mog, unmissable
• An extra minigame when controlling Vivi in Alexandria for the 2nd time, missable

Also, there are 4 new bosses that can be fought at the end of the game.
For that, speak to Hades after defeating Lich and obtaining a Pumice: he will challenge you with new fights.
• The 3 Black Waltzes fighting together
• The 2nd opus of Tantarian, available only if you defeated it in Alexandria's Castle
• Meltigemini, with pieces of real twins inside
• The 4 Guardians fighting together

And Excalibur II can now be acquired by two different methods:
1) Reach and beat Hades in less than 14 hours,
2) Get all the collectable treasures of the game (there are 4 little mistakes allowed) to obtain the highest treasure rank.
Including a few Mimics, that makes 404 unique treasures to find.
The list is the same as in vanilla (for the locations at least) and can be found in this topic[gamefaqs.gamespot.com].


Gameplay-wise, there are a lot of changes. The battle system has been reworked, always with the aim of having more balanced mechanics and open to diverse strategies.

Here is a list of these changes: it is more or less written in decreasing order of importance, which allows you to stop reading whenever you don't want to know any more.


Changes in the abilities

An extended description of each ability can be found in this spreadsheet[docs.google.com].

In particular:
• Some abilities are short-ranged, meaning that they are influenced by the character's row [in vanilla, only the attack command is] and back attacks. They also can't be used against out-of-range enemies.
• Some abilities can deal critical strikes [in vanilla, only the attack command can], which doubles their damage.
• Some abilities use the properties of the character's weapon, which includes its element (if the ability has an element, both are taken into account) [in vanilla, only No Mercy, Stock Break and Shock does that], the bonus given by killer abilities and the weapon's status if the supporting ability Add Status is enabled [in vanilla, only the attack command does that].

• With Bandit enabled, stealing all the 4 items of an enemy cannot take more than 10 attempts:
The super-common item is stolen at the 1st attempt,
The common item is stolen for sure after 1 unsuccessful steal,
The rare item is stolen for sure after 2 other unsuccessful steals,
The super-rare item is stolen for sure after 3 other unsuccessful steals.
When Master Thief is also enabled, only 1 unsuccessful steal can be done between each successful steals (so all the items are stolen after 7 attempts maximum), and the most rare items have the priority.
When Bandit is not enabled and the first steal's random check fails, the counter of unsuccessful steals is not increased [as in vanilla, the first random check is "Random(0, Caster's level + spirit - 1) ≥ Random(0, Target's level - 1)" ; this check is bypassed by Bandit].
Zidane can still steal items with luck, in which case the counter of unsuccessful steals neither increase or reset.

• The trance of any ally can be manually triggered using Zidane's Transcend skill provided that the gauge is already at 50% at least.
• Beatrix has a double-cast Seiken + White Magic trance.
• Quina's trance has changed to Double Blue.
• Scan cannot miss anymore [in vanilla, it misses against most bosses and several special enemies],
• Summons are special for 3 reasons:
1) As in Vanilla, their power increases with the number of jewels that you own (except for Odin for which it is a penalty), up to a +49 bonus [+99 in vanilla],
2) Their power increases each time you cast them, up to 50 times for a bonus of +50,
3) The first time you cast a summon in a battle, it gets priority over the other commands: it is summoned before the other commands in queue, even if the ATB gauge was filled after. When Dagger and Eiko are both in the battle, summons get priority once for both of them.
• Stellar Circle 5 and Meo Twister increase the critical rate on the enemies, adding a 33% chance to the default critical chance (non cumulative).
• Gravity damage are now effective against all the enemies, including bosses. Their power is divided by 4 against bosses [in vanilla, Gravity spells always miss on most bosses].
• Using a Soft on a stone-type enemy cuts its current HP in half. It deals 1/8 of a boss's current HP against a boss instead [in vanilla, using a Soft on a stone-type enemy immediatly kills it].

Note that some weapons get a special power bonus with the Attack command (thief swords and knight swords are empowered by spirit, rackets are empowered by speed and Save The Queen is empowered by level). As in vanilla, this bonus only applies when using the Attack command.

Supporting Abilities

Auto-Shell, Auto-Protect, Cheat Fate (immunes against Doom) and Fidget are added to several characters.
When Fidget is activated, the character changes row everytime s/he attacks.
Bright Eyes, Restore HP, Reflectx2 and Gamble Defence are removed.
Accuracy+ now immunes against Blind [in vanilla, physical attacks cannot miss with Accuracy+ even under Blind, the only effect of which is then to remove the character's evasion against enemy attacks].
Protect Girls triggers anytime [in vanilla, it triggers only under 50% of Max HP].
Cover triggers under 50% of Max HP [in vanilla, it triggers only under 17% of Max HP (yellow HP)].

The way that most damage modifiers work has changed:
• When accumulated, the damage bonuses give +50%, +100%, +125%, +150%, +162%, +175%, etc... (the theoretical limit is a bonus of +200%, which is 3 times the base power),
• For Steiner's trance, these bonuses are doubled to +100%, +200%, +250%, +300%, +325%, +350%, etc... [in vanilla, Steiner's attack command gets a +200% bonus instead of the usual +50% given by Trance; it is not the case anymore],
• The damage penalties cancel damage bonuses,
• If there are more damage penalties than bonuses, the damage are halved that many times.
Damage bonuses include Killer abilities, elemental equipment boosts, target's elemental weaknesses, Berserk or Trance, target's Sleep, target's Mini, back attack, special supporting abilities (High Jump, Concentrate, Power Throw) and MP Attack (Attack command only).
Damage penalties include Mini (for most of magic attacks), short-ranged attacks from back row, multi-targeting a spell that can be single-target, target's elemental resistances, target's defend, target's shell or protect.
Critical strikes (damage x2), summon short forms (damage x0.67) and physical attacks under Mini (damage drastically lowered) are not concerned by the above.
[In vanilla, the damage are multiplied by 1.5 for each bonus instead, except that killer abilities, elemental boosts, weaknesses and resistances are applied no more than once each.]
Damage bonuses are marked visually with a small blow effect for each bonus at impact.

Fixed Return Magic non working on Necron or behaving differently than in the PSX version of the game (multi-target spells are now multi-target returned).

Statuses

The duration and speed of statuses has been reworked.
They are now independant of the fighter's spirit, except for Doom and Gradual Petrify (the more spirit you have, the longer it takes).
Haste and Slow respectively decreases and increases the status duration and respectively speed up and slow down the ticks of Poison, Venom and Regen.
[In vanilla, the more spirit you have, the longer statuses last, except for Doom and Gradual Petrify that are running faster with higher spirit. The ticks of Regen are also faster while the ticks of Poison and Venom are slower.]

Blind makes the target selection unreliable, for both the enemies and the player characters:
https://i.imgur.com/k6HEQDa.png
In this situation, Garnet is blinded:
- single-targeting Vivi or Zidane will be unreliable (either one can be aimed at in the end) because they are both on Garnet's right side,
- single-targeting oneself is reliable,
- single-targeting Quina is reliable because s/he is the only one on Garnet's left side,
- single-targeting any enemy is unreliable (any enemy can be aimed at in the end),
- multi-targeting is reliable.

Float gives a +30% evasion bonus against physical attacks if the attacker doesn't float.
Remedies cure Poison, Venom, Silence, Blind, Stop, Mini, Gradual Petrify, Confuse, Heat and Freeze [in vanilla, it doesn't cure Confuse, Heat and Freeze].
Phoenix Pinions cure Doom (they also cost and sell cheaper).
Vanish is efficient against more attacks (all the short-ranged physical attacks).
Defending protects against many negative statuses: Silence, Blind, Confuse, Berserk, Sleep, Heat, Freeze and Gradual Petrify.
Confuse triggers a back attack bonus half of the time [in vanilla, only back attacks at the start of battles and running away can trigger a back attack bonus].
Silence drastically lowers trance increase.

Poison and Doom can now be inflicted to several bosses.
For Poison, the damage per tick on bosses is 1/64 of Max HP instead of 1/16.
For Doom, a boss doesn't die at the end of the countdown but looses 1/5 of its Max HP instead.

Heat and Freeze last only a short time. Freeze lasts 1.5 times longer than Heat.
Vanish and Sleep last longer.
The ticks of venom are 1.5 times slower than the ticks of Regen or Poison [in vanilla, they are 2 times slower].

Steiner's Break abilities can be used against bosses but are less effective [in vanilla, they are just as effective as usual]:
• Power/Magic Break: bring to 80% of the boss's normal stat, instead of 67%.
• Armor/Mental Break: bring to 67% of the boss's normal stat, instead of 50%.
These can be used again if the enemy somehow changes its stat through a special ability.

Enemies

Reasonably increased the stats of enemies and made them harder through their AI.
The Max MP of the enemies have been drastically lowered in order to get emptied in a decent amount of time through MP damage.

Changes to the party's abilities reflect on the enemies' abilities.
More statuses are inflicted by enemy attacks and spells.
More abilities can be critical strikes, especially the physical attacks [in vanilla, a non-missable physical attack, like Ark's Boomerang, doesn't have critical] or the breaths.

The class of several enemies has been changed. Enemies are not automatically "birds" as soon as they are floating or flying, and there are more "humanoids".
Classification is less restricted by gameplay constraints [in vanilla, a few bosses are not "stone" or "zombie" despite the evidence because it would mean a free win; it is no longer the case].

Ragtime Mouse's questions are modified.
Quina may eat humanoids [in vanilla, they are non edible, like most bosses].

Miscellaneous

A few chests have a changed content. In particular:
• The Dragon's Hair and the Kain Lance are switched, making Dragon's Hair only available in late game,
• The Tiger Racket is only available after the return of the mist and seeing a cutscene with Quan (this specific optional cutscene is thus delayed),
• Several Hammers can be obtained; Hammers can be used by Vivi, Eiko and Dagger to improve their strength,
• Several acclaimed prices in Treno's Auction House have a delayed availability (Dark Matter in particular).

The elemental weakness given by pieces of equipment are now given in their description [in vanilla, they are hidden].
The Cotton Robe money trick was removed (they sell a bit less).
A couple of weapons can be used by several characters (for instance, Dagger can use the... dagger).
The ultimate weapons give a big boost to main characteristics (Strength, Magic, Speed and Spirit).
A few minigames have been tweaked.


Note about the version "Beatrix-only"

That version is meant to provide additional content without changing the difficulty or the gameplay of the vanilla (non-modded) game. It includes:
- Recruitable Beatrix (with cutscenes, abilities, trance etc.),
- Hidden scenes cut by the devs,
- The optional stuff that Hades offers (4 extra bosses and their rewards; the extra bosses are slightly easier since they inflict less statuses, but their damage and HP are the same as in the main version of the mod),
- Thunder Slash fix (that's the only non-optional gameplay aspect I kept in that version).


Enjoy !

[TehMighty]

Finally! Your a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ beast Tirlititi! Been waiting for your mod since this came out!

[Ginson]

Holy moly,

really lookin' forward to try this.

Beatrix as a permanent character without crashes?! A dream come true.

May I ask you some questions?

- How are you able to change the cutscenes to include Beatrix?
- Will she only be able to wield the "Save the Queen"?
- Is she able to learn support abilities?
- She is a seperate character isn't she? Or does she replace Steiner or someone else?

Thanks in advance :)

Btw if you now find a way to shrink the menus to the original size in your mod, you would be my personal hero.

[Tirlititi]

Thanks TehMighty

@ Gin17:
- I can modify the cutscenes, that's all ^^
- She can wield the other Knight Swords except for Excalibur II which is Steiner-only (she can wield the Ultima Sword, Excalibur and Ragnarok).
- No, she can't learn supporting abilities, surely for a future version but it would need to modify the game's engine further and I don't do that for now,
- Yes, she is a separate character and you don't have to give up Steiner for her. For some reason, she is easier to include in the team than Blank, Marcus or Cinna (she has a permanent character slot for her alone). Maybe the devs had the idea to include her in the final team at some point.

As for menus, that also requires to modify the engine. That and a few bugs (the Tetra Master rank, for instance) will be fixed in a future release (but I don't plan to make it soon).

[coldreactive]

Maybe make Mini be able to be used on your own party. For whatever reason (and be able to cure Mini.)

[Moogy]

Wow thats so cool !!
Does this disable achievements in any way?
Is there a time mod that stops time as well?

[Moogy]

Thank you for this, now i can finally enjoy the PC version for reals !

[Tirlititi]

@ ColdReactive: that's already the case, isn't it?

@ Moogy: what do you mean, "stop time"? For Excalibur II?
I made a no-time-requirement mod for EII a little while ago, you can still find it in the board I guess. But that's incompatible with Alternate Fantasy as I changed the requirements for EII in it as well (see the end of the OP).

[Moogy]

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

@ ColdReactive: that's already the case, isn't it?

@ Moogy: what do you mean, "stop time"? For Excalibur II?
I made a no-time-requirement mod for EII a little while ago, you can still find it in the board I guess. But that's incompatible with Alternate Fantasy as I changed the requirements for EII in it as well (see the end of the OP).

Ah ok, so all i need to do is gather all treasures ? Thats awesome
But what about the achievements ?

[Moogy]

And another thing i love the ability switching but LV5 Death and Dragon Breath are one of my favorite attacks.
Are they removed because they're too OP ?
Because for the Dragon Breath to be effective anyway, you have to use first another ability with 9999 damage.
And lv5 Death is perfect for farming Grand Dragons.

Definetly agree with most of the other stuff though.
Im just concerned about removal of some abilities and possibilities of achievements not working.

[Tirlititi]

The achievments still work, yes, sorry. I'm not sure if Beatrix counts for Femmes Fatales and there's a way to get more moonstones, but other than that, there's no problem.

The mod was thought to be hard but not require grinding (at least not before the last boss). Lvl 5 Death is quiet uninteresting other than farming (and going through the Desert Palace without doing any real fight), so I replaced it.

Dragon Breath is a 9999 skill and I removed them. Dealing 9999 damage (not necessarily in 1 hit) beforehand is not such a hard requirement. Plus it's multi-targeting, so yeah I would call it OP :p

[Moogy]

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

The achievments still work, yes, sorry. I'm not sure if Beatrix counts for Femmes Fatales and there's a way to get more moonstones, but other than that, there's no problem.

The mod was thought to be hard but not require grinding (at least not before the last boss). Lvl 5 Death is quiet uninteresting other than farming (and going through the Desert Palace without doing any real fight), so I replaced it.

Dragon Breath is a 9999 skill and I removed them. Dealing 9999 damage (not necessarily in 1 hit) beforehand is not such a hard requirement. Plus it's multi-targeting, so yeah I would call it OP :p

Thats true considering how low on HP the enemies are, but how can we kill Yans efficiently now ? Lol

But dude thank you for you hard work ! Really appreciate it

[[deleted]]

Is Tirlititi the owner of this tool? if so, I must say this again:
First I commend and thank the hell outta ya for making such an amazing tool! (Its better than ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gameshark I'll tell ya that!)
Secondly,
"why can't I load the modded files made with the tool? whenever I try to load modded files it crashes, good thing I made backups of the original beforehand, I would have to always put back the original files to load up the tool, then I can open the mod file .hws. But sometimes, it crashes when I do that.
I didn't make a backup of the Assembly-CSharp.dll file, but when I got the original back from another re-install of the game, the tool crashed and refused to open.

But aside that it still works. Imma try this mod for a while (see if its all what its hyped up to be: HARD)
But could you make it EVEN MORE HARDER?! Like But all bosses immuned to everything and make then have higher health than usual with crazy high stats? That would be a challnged I'd be willing to take on!

Also, I wanted Vivi to be able to have Dagger's Eidolons to learn, so I tried changing his ability "Fire" with Dagger's Ifrit, but when I started the game, and entered a battle, things got all glitched up, the ATB gauge was full, but no command window, character's with regen ability regenerated HP at endless fast speed, couldn't do anything but quit the game. Is there a way to work around this?

Thirdly, now where can you export and import sfxs from the game?
Also, how can you get Beatrix in a permanent party? Is there a readme with all the info I missed or something?

[Tirlititi]

I'm not gonna waste my time answering you, Aaliyah. I know your past as a troll here.

My tool is not bug-free and I know it. I try to help anyone who struggle with it.
However, when lies are melted together with truth, it's impossible to detect which problem is at hand.

Besides, this is not the appropriate topic.

EDIT: People have started to quote this message as an "evidence" of Aaliyah being a troll. It is dishonest to quote this 2 years-old message without quoting my answer to it:

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

I have revised my position since then.

The guy is not a troll in the sense that he is not doing it on purpose and having fun with being aggressive. It's rather the contrary: that's painful for him. He does have a different mental health condition, and if he decided not to tell you what, I won't say it myself, but that is a real thing.

It doesn't excuse insults or changes his personality. But don't take his words too personally and please, if my words have any influence, go easy on him.

[Moogy]

You can also add this to the mod section, and also into the Final Fantasy modding group.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ff-modding/discussions/13/

Btw this works well for me so far

[Moogy]

Also few other things to mentioned that might be looked into:

-Zidane has now Free Energy both in skills and Dyne, is that neccessary ?
-Since Quina abilities have been changed, how to find the new skills ?
-Also a little mistake in the beginning whereas Vivi couldnt cast Fire on the Prison Cage.
Zidane says afterwards that his black magic saved the day, however that never happened :D

But man thats challenging lol, potions are done by the time i encounter Baku again.
Btw a FPS fix where the battle would be a little quicker, would be a great add in the future :)