[MODDING DISCUSSION]

[Vaan]

https://discord.gg/kHkEgZE Discord for discussion

Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy12

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VBF Browser:
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy12/mods/3
With this you can browse the VBF and inject/extract single files/folders.

Here is an easy to use tool to FULLY unpack/repack the game file: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/252064925193601024/410483949794754581/VBFUnpackGUI.zip
Mostly only for people who want to mess around with the files.

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The license board files correspond as follow:

• board_1.bin White Mage
  
• board_2.bin Uhlan
  
• board_3.bin Machinist
  
• board_4.bin Red Battlemage
  
• board_5.bin Knight
  
• board_6.bin Monk
  
• board_7.bin Time Battlemage
  
• board_8.bin Foebreaker
  
• board_8.bin Archer
  
• board_10.bin Black Mage
  
• board_11.bin Bushi
  
• board_12.bin Shikari

ejh1990 License Board Pack

http://steamcommunity.com/app/595520/discussions/0/1700541698690214622/?ctp=12#c1700541698705821949

[Sakhari]

Originally posted by Soulmancer:

Any potential leads or development on FOV, difficulty modifiers and a 4 party mod that doesn't depend on guests?

As difficulty goes, one of the reasons I'm so interested in modifying equipment is because the ease of the game is largely due to how easy it is to find overpowered gear at almost any stage (which also causes the problem of a huge portion of available equipment being effectively worthless).

As far as I'm concerned, the ability to change equipment and skills makes it possible to tackle both the difficulty and variety problems in one go.

[eutow_]

Originally posted by Rubeus:

swarna and watafuzz, do you mind if I upload those into the item data portion of the github issue? also, again, wow, nice work guys!

Not at all, do what you want with them.

Originally posted by Soulmancer:

Any potential leads or development on FOV, difficulty modifiers and a 4 party mod that doesn't depend on guests?

I know cheat engine can kind of pull off the later two but the difficulty/damage modifiers have to be run every time you play and while you can create a party of 4 out of any characters, as soon as you go into the menu it forces you to remove the 4th character or they get bumped by a guest if you have one.

We definitely can already change the difficulty of the game through item/abilities, the rest tho I have no idea.

[eutow_]

Here is chr_dat.bin, I haven't figured much about it. 32 bits header, 128 bytes groups. Starting equipment and items are in there and I would assume stats but I haven't looked for them yet:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/419079951397027840/chr_data.ods

The item codes are the same as in the cheat engine table. Item that are xx80 seem to be maps (0080 is rabanastsre) and item that are xx60 seem to be gambits (0060 is foe:party leader's target).

Edit: base (at least) stats are indeed in there, starting at 0x15 in my table I think. Unsure of what byte does what, testing is pretty tedious for this one.

Edit2: Did some more testing here is the raw data:

stats
102;30;23;22;24;24

FFing

0x15>rien
0x16>hp:409
0x19>hp:165;
0x1A>mp:348
0x1D>mp:58;lv8 mp:135
0x1E>str:99
0x1F>str:24;lv8 str:38
0x20>magic power:99
0x21>magic power:23; lv8 magic power:37

00ing

0x21>magic power:22; lv34 magic power:22

So it seems that it goes hp>mp>strengh>magic>vit>speed starting at 0x16. First base stat then growth.

0x44 is starting LP

0x32 is summon timer

That led me to discover that you can equip the esper's weapons:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/419146241209925642/unknown.png

pretty sure they are the 13 Reserve in my eitm_waepons.ods

[eutow_]

Originally posted by Dwight:

If it cannot incur in something as simple as texture sprite extracting, what good is this?

Have you looked into SpecialK? I haven't spend much time on it but I managed to extract a bunch of textures with it.

[Soulmancer]

Originally posted by Soulmancer:

Any potential leads or development on FOV, difficulty modifiers and a 4 party mod that doesn't depend on guests?

I know cheat engine can kind of pull off the later two but the difficulty/damage modifiers have to be run every time you play and while you can create a party of 4 out of any characters, as soon as you go into the menu it forces you to remove the 4th character or they get bumped by a guest if you have one.

We definitely can already change the difficulty of the game through item/abilities, the rest tho I have no idea.

Bummer, I hope it is possible and not hardcoded

[eutow_]

Originally posted by Dwight:

Originally posted by watafuzz:

Have you looked into SpecialK? I haven't spend much time on it but I managed to extract a bunch of textures with it.

If this is true, please send me a link with it, please do.

Why would i be lying lol, here's some ui stuff I extracted:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/419256237746683906/Uncompressed_2795F183.png

you can find it here:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SpecialK_Mods/discussions/0/1693785035817147509/

[eutow_]

I don't remember what I saw, that was a month ago. The dl is right there in the link I sent you, just get to work it will go a lot faster than waiting for someone to do your bidding.

[Swarna]

Originally posted by watafuzz:

Here is chr_dat.bin

0x16 HP Base
0x19 HP Modifier

0x1A HP Base
0x1D MP Modifier

0x1E STR Base
0x1F STR Growth

0x21 MAG Base
0x22 MAG Growth

0x24 MAG Base
0x25 MAG Growth

0x27 SPD Base
0x28 SPD Growth

The in-between bytes might be upper/lower bytes for the adjacent values (didn't test)

STR/MAG/VIT/SPD Formula:

Base + (Growth/128)*Level

(rounded down on status screen)

HP/MP Formula:

(Base + Bonus) * Modifier

(rounded down on status screen)

The Bonus is accumulated randomly on level-ups. The full table can be found here:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/459841-final-fantasy-xii/faqs/45900
Ctrl+F "6a"
The table hasn't changed in the Zodiac Version.

[eutow_]

Well there seems to be a value that handle the size of monsters:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/419456432275062784/unknown.png

Found some more values for enemies in their respective .ard area files in ps2data\plan_master\in\plan_map\xxx_x\area, albeit nothing too interesting.

So far I've managed to change/break animation, name, drops/steal, behavior

Here are some entries:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/419518298581893130/enemy_ard.ods

Edit: never mind that, stats do appear to be in there:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/419522605956202496/unknown.png

Edit 2:

So the .ard files seem to be divided in 4.

the second part is the loot and stuff and the third handles damage in some way, don't know what the other 2 do.

Edit 3: stats are in the third part of the .ard file. Taking sav_a.ard as example it starts at (I think) 0x00002560 with the hyena stats:

hp1,hp2,hp3,hp4,mp1,mp2,str,magic,vitality,speed,evade,defense,m.def,
attack,xx,LP,xx,xx,xx,Exp,xx,...

it's overall 56 bytes long.

[Soulmancer]

I figure a 4th party member that satisfies the menu would need to flagged as a guest somehow? or the max number of party members has to referenced somewhere? Because it seems just adding the 4th member is very easily done, but unless the 4th character is a guest the menu isn't happy.

I guess the bigger challenge would be removing the active guest party member to the roster from within the menu?

Logically would all the controls / rules for the party menu be in the same place if not hardcoded?

[Rubeus]

Originally posted by Swarna:

Known Weapon Fields per Byte (Starting from offset 0x6C and repeating every 52 bytes):
Weapon Type? (0x0A for melee, 0x64 for ranged, 0x14 for Kumbha, 0xC8 for Seitengrat)
Damage Formula
ATK

^ C8 = double 64, and seitengrat has 20 range, whereas most ranged weapons have 10. kumbha is special in that it has "a range of 2" (per wiki). I'll bet you this is the game's reckoning of range.
that would make 0x05 = range if this is correct

[Swarna]

Originally posted by watafuzz:

Originally posted by ejh1990:

Yeah, I had mapped out what bytes do what. I just didn't try starting a new game, hence why it wasn't working for me. Teaches me not to be so dumb and lazy, I guess ^-^'

Each licence can theoretically grant up to 8 items/abilities (though the display will obviously look weird beyond 4).

I'll get to making a note of them tommorrow then (for those who are wanting custom licences).

Yeah here's what it looks like when you put more than 4:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/418546764811993098/unknown.png

I haven't found a way to scroll down lmao.

How do you add abilities to licenses?

[eutow_]

Originally posted by Swarna:

Originally posted by watafuzz:

Yeah here's what it looks like when you put more than 4:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/412582927344336896/418546764811993098/unknown.png

I haven't found a way to scroll down lmao.

How do you add abilities to licenses?

It's in license_data.bin, there's something on the github saying what's what.

[Soulmancer]

I made a poor attempt at figuring out the 4th party member puzzle with the license editor and party editor cheat tables.

Seems the solution is more complicated then I figured it'd be... I could find no unique attribute, flag or license that would apply to the guest... and even if I did guests are glitchy if they aren't active in your party... If you put add a guest into a reserve slot and go into the menu they won't be active in your party, but it also will not let you move them into the active party; it will just say a guest cannot be removed even when in the reserve slot... as soon as you try to change party members in any way, the guest will jump into an active slot and cannot be removed, yet is now counted toward one of 3 character max in the party. It's a shame the specific guest slot itself isn't the solution. At any rate in order to create a mod it would involve removing the max party limit, but this would still be a problem whenever a guest joined your party as they would either over-ride the 4th slot character and/or glitch out the party menu. :(

So the best solution for now and likely in the foreseeable is to just use the hero editor any time you go into the menu to sort out your party. Unfortunate but creating a proper mod to fix both issues is well beyond my skills.

[Soulmancer]

Some further developments playing with the hero editor for a 4th active party member.

Not sure if this is any help, but I found a weird glitch / work around that maybe someone can exploit further? If you add any character to the 4th slot that isn't a guest and go into the menu it will force you to remove them from the active party... after that's done, if you go into a new zone/area the 4th slot character will be duplicated "kind of" ... that character will remain in a reserve slot but will also re-appear in the 4th active slot, taking up 2 spots on the party menu screen yet it shows neither as being active in your party; however, that character WILL be active during exploration and combat contrary to the menu. The character function normally and still gains experience, but it tricks the menu into thinking they are not in the active party... the only weird side effect is the character takes up 2 slots in the menu screen... both gain experience at the same rate; but looks like they may also gain double LP?

Another problem is that the 4th character cannot participate in multi quickening combos as there is no key/button assigned to the 4th party member, they can only initiate the first quickening BUT it looks like the could contribute to follow up quickenings if they had a key/button assigned.

The most important take away from this is that a party member apparently doesn't have to be active in the menu to be active in exploration or battle... but the only way I've been able to accomplish this is the method above with the duplicate character in reserve.