[FF7] Tifa: Third Limit Breaks

[Karifean]

So I've been experimenting with letting characters have 3 Limit Breaks on the LB Level 1. Problem is, Tifa's reels don't play along. The reel for her third Level 1 Limit Break is always a pure MISS reel. Is there any way to fix this?

[nfitc1]

I have an answer for the PC side. Is that what you're using?

Even if that's not what you're using I'll explain anyway.
There's a table of bytes located at 0x91EAD0 (0x51D4D0) that is 16 x 10. These are either 0, 1, or 2 (other values will cause graphical glitches). When the Limit attack is chosen this is used to form the reel for the limit attack. 0 is miss, 1 is hit and 2 is yeah!. The entries on rows 3, 6, and 9 are all 0. That will make them all miss. Setting them to other values will re-populate them.

HOWEVER! Here's some bad news. It won't work. Due to restraints on the mechanics (which I won't bother going in to), there can only be 8 attacks chained at a time. Setting third limits will make a maximum of 10 so you would NEVER GET 3-2 AND HIGHER. This happened to me years ago when I was GS-ing the PSX game to enable all limits. If you tell the game Tifa has learned her X-3 limits it will bring up those full-miss reels. Even if you get Yeahs on all of the valid ones, it won't go higher than Dolphin Blow. I never saw Meteor Strike or Final Heaven until I played the PC version and legit'ly taught it to her.
Altering this would require a re-write of some core mechanics that aren't entirely known. It is possible, but not recommended.

[Bosola]

What uses that follow-up action stuff? I'm assuming all attacks with the 'follow with attack X' additional effect, but does anything else? Where are the critical 'yeah!' flags stored?

[nfitc1]

What uses that follow-up action stuff? I'm assuming all attacks with the 'follow with attack X' additional effect, but does anything else?

Here are the additional effects that use this:
01 (If Steel Bladed Sword misses all its targets it queues Gunge Lance)
13 (Tifa's slots)
18 (Satan Slam, Finishing Touch)
1A (Blade Beam)
According to my notes these are the only actions which use this feature. No enemy attacks have these effects. AFAIK, the aforelinked page contains an exhaustive list of actions which use additional effects (with the multi-strike effect excluded because there are a lot of limits which do that, but no enemy-exclusive actions do).

Where are the critical 'yeah!' flags stored?

Here's another part of the caveat. It is a seven-byte array (plus an alignment byte) at 0x9A88B4. This could easily be moved to allow for a 10-slot result, but that requires several little changes.

[Tenko Kuugen]

The only workaround I had in mind was to use the follow-up effect on Tifa's limits to simulate an X-3 limit with the X-2 limit and then adjust the learning rate of the X-2 limit.
I couldn't get that to work though and I honestly don't remember what it failed at

[Karifean]

I have an answer for the PC side. Is that what you're using?

Even if that's not what you're using I'll explain anyway.
There's a table of bytes located at 0x91EAD0 (0x51D4D0) that is 16 x 10. These are either 0, 1, or 2 (other values will cause graphical glitches). When the Limit attack is chosen this is used to form the reel for the limit attack. 0 is miss, 1 is hit and 2 is yeah!. The entries on rows 3, 6, and 9 are all 0. That will make them all miss. Setting them to other values will re-populate them.

HOWEVER! Here's some bad news. It won't work. Due to restraints on the mechanics (which I won't bother going in to), there can only be 8 attacks chained at a time. Setting third limits will make a maximum of 10 so you would NEVER GET 3-2 AND HIGHER. This happened to me years ago when I was GS-ing the PSX game to enable all limits. If you tell the game Tifa has learned her X-3 limits it will bring up those full-miss reels. Even if you get Yeahs on all of the valid ones, it won't go higher than Dolphin Blow. I never saw Meteor Strike or Final Heaven until I played the PC version and legit'ly taught it to her.
Altering this would require a re-write of some core mechanics that aren't entirely known. It is possible, but not recommended.

Thank you very much! Exactly what I'm looking for. That second part shouldn't be a problem since I didn't actually add new Limit Breaks, but reorganized them so most characters have 3 Level 1 LBs, 2 Level 2 LBs, 1 Level 3 LB and 1 Level 4 LB. With some rebalancing of required HP loss for each Limit Level and added elemental attributes to some of her hits, it's worth thinking about which Limit Level you'll pick. If the enemy absorbs Water you'll want to get the MISS on Waterkick and Dolphin Blow anyways, you know?