Messages

801

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2014-02-02 12:10:14 »

That's a bug, then, yes.
Hum.... Maybe the japanese version has some differences about that? I don't have the disc 4 : I do my tests (about the japanese version) on disc 1 and didn't experience bugs like this for now.

I'll try to get where it comes from. Thanks a bunch for telling me.

802

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2014-02-02 11:52:46 »

It says "data unused in this disc" : it only means that the Memoria text block doesn't exist in disc 1-3. You mean you opened your mod file on disc 4 and it said "Unused text block" about the Memoria text block?

803

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2014-02-02 08:15:43 »

I don't know what's going on either :/

But you shouldn't open patched games with Hades Workshop (there is 1 unsafe thing : export a patch when the file on your disc has been modified somehow). Patches/overwrite binary should be used only to create the final version of the game. Use the "Save Mod" (Ctrl+S) option to save changes that you want to go back to later.

I'm releasing an updated version then. There is the bug-fix I talked about in my previous post : it may come from there (though it was pretty harmless if you only used "Save Mod"). You can also import 2 pages of charmaps instead of 1, increasing a bit the number/size of characters you can draw for a custom alphabet.

You were using the version 0.21b, right?

Anyway, I hope it'll be fixed without too much pain ^^' Sorry about that.

804

Completely Unrelated / Re: request legend of the dragoon mods

« on: 2014-01-23 17:25:57 »

Yeah, Legend Of Dragoon is a nice game.
But it is playstation only ; it's much easier to make mod of PC games.

805

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2014-01-21 16:28:13 »

Haha, I wished I could go that far. Thanks for the cheers, I appreciate ^^

I guess I'm going to make one more little update before attacking the next big release. I have found another bug in saving games (this one is not my fault ! That was because of a weirdery in FFIX's datas) and I'll make it so you can import 2 pages in the charmap textures.
I've begun to make a mod myself, so I did some tests about effects and battle mechanics. I'll also put them in the help.

By the way, did you know that a fire spell cures the Frozen status? I find this kind of little subtleties great in RPGs 

806

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2014-01-02 22:15:00 »

Updated for a bug-fix version (mainly).
- There were several bugs in savings. In short, PPF exportation didn't work when textures were involved and mod saves couldn't be read properly some texts (saves are not corrupted however).
- When you load mods and it says "There are unused things in this disc", the unused things are not discarded anymore when you save your mod back. A mod file can thus contain all the datas about the 4 discs at the same time (it was best to have 1 mod per disc until now because of these datas not used in each of them).
- The rendering problem of letters described in my previous update has been replaced by another  The letters' size are very roughly adjusted from the picture's width. It's not precise a lot so there may be a little difference with normal letters' spacing.

I'm gonna add the other texts to the tool progressively.

Happy new year btw.

807

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-12-15 22:26:02 »

Update.
This version is quiet incomplete for several reasons, but I'm afraid I won't work on the program a lot for the christmas period...
- You can now change the charmap's image (it's in the "Text" panel) and so the whole alphabet the game uses,
- Some others UI images became also editable in the process,
- Improved the "Preferences" options,
- Thus, you can now open Final Fantasy IX, the japanese version !
- Fixed some bugs.

About what's not complete :
- The letters' width is not editable yet. If you replace a letter by another one bigger, it will render weirdely in-game. In the following example of what I mean, the latin alphabet has been replaced by the same alphabet, but bigger :

- Some of the charmap textures use really few colors and take the advantage of that to have 2 different textures painted at the same place. You can't use that trick yet when you import your own texture.
- I have seen some bugs with the .ppf conversion of Battle Scenes but I didn't fixed it yet.
- For now, I suggest you to go to the "Preferences" options before opening any file, select the alphabet you want, and then only open a file. You should be able to swap between alphabets whenever you want in the next release, but it's still in-progress.

And last but not least : I have included 2 charmaps in "HadesWorkshop.conf". Those are the only ones I know because they are on the qhimm wiki. If you want to read files using other charmaps (random example : the cyrillic alphabet ), you'll have to PM it to me (the whole charmap, TITS all the symbols used in FFIX's texts and their order, just like these) so I can add it to the program. You can also try to add it yourself into "HadesWorkshop.conf" using the same syntax than for the others. "HadesWorkshop.conf" is coded with utf-8 and must remain so.

shikulja, I won't add an "Import all the texts" feature for now : you'll have to simply copy/paste them from you notepad to the program.

808

Completely Unrelated / Re: Server is up!!! Yeyyy!

« on: 2013-12-11 15:30:35 »

Good to have the forum back !
Well done the team.

809

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-12-05 16:28:11 »

shakotay2 has to be over-busy to refuse to spend more than 20 minutes on this...

Anyway, that doesn't interest me. This is the extracted data of the World Map's model (and far from all of it). If something, the structure of the datas inside the binary would be more interesting to me. But then again, I don't intend to make a World Map's model extractor before some time.

Thanks for your will to help, though.

810

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-26 09:03:25 »

Hurray for my dumberness !
I didn't test it properly then... They're back.

811

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-25 20:45:39 »

So, first thing first, I've updated the program :
- It can now kind of import textures for the Battle scenes models.
- The help is improved a bit.
- I think the dll are not required anymore (it turns out they were only debugging dll ^^').
- Some few bug fixes.

I didn't test the model importation thoroughly but it seems to work, more or less (exporting a model + re-importing it elsewhere works at least).

I'm not really satisfied with the way I handle it because :
1) you have to manually import textures and models separately and make the link after.
2) The texture you can import must not be larger than 768x256 (3 times a 256x256 texture, which is what most of the default scenes use).
3) There are 2 opposite needs concerning textures and UV mapping : the UV mapping in the model must refer to a 256x256 part of the full picture (called "Painting" in the program) but the importation process creates a palette, which is quiet complicated by itself, and would better require the textures to be splitted into smaller parts to have a better resolution (a palette is limited to 256 colors). I really don't know how to make it nice...

Tell me if I made a mistake and the dll are still needed (I don't think that's the case, but who knows...).

@ Kikoutei-sama : Ah, their names... Yes, that is somewhere else, in a more general text block. I'll try to give access to it.

@ Caledor : There is already an exporting feature, but I know that's not that convenient. I'll think about it (a search feature, I guess) but it would be a waste of time to make it before I find a definite way of managing the charmap (if I want the program to be able to write texts in, let's say, chinese, I have to re-write the way the texts are handled by the program).

@ Bosola : I'm not sure to fully understand you. First, models are not the only thing Hades Workshop can edit. Second, I don't know how the FF7 tools you're refering to are coded, but I tried to make the binary saves (the "Save Mod" feature, if that's indeed what you're talking about) looking alike the binary data in the FFIX disc : this way, a program reading a FFIX disc should have little problem reading my files.
Actually, the differences is that
1) there is an header in my file and each data blocks begin with one or several identifiers (which are, if I can do it, also using FFIX's standart : I use the chunk type list and the object's identifiers, for instance).
2) there is no "offset constraint", so the data blocks can be however large or in whichever order they want.

Of course, my system is far from being perfect. I think the last time I looked about it, I told myself that I should have add more "Version bytes" to make the format a bit more flexible (for spells, for instance, I think I'll add to write datas related to Kikoutei-sama's issue in a separated data block instead of just writting them next to the other spell datas).

Tell me if I missed the point or if I'm not clear ^^ That's likely to have happened.

812

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-24 21:53:21 »

Thanks It will save me some time indeed.

@ Kikoutei : You mean they are not in the spell section list? :O
I have them... They are named "Atomos", "Carbuncle" (4 of them, including Ruby-light) and "Fenrir".
Or maybe you speak about the animations or about the effects? Eidolons' effects are quiet weird and you can't change the "ores powerup" effect on them, I guess.

813

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-14 16:29:37 »

No, not for now. It's on my to-do list though. Good luck with your project

About location names, you may edit them (they are world map texts, even if you would need to change them in all the dialogs too) but it's not working so well as I need to implement text opcode editing.

814

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-13 20:06:24 »

Wow, great !
The Blitz3D script seems exploitable at first glance. It'll be useful anyway

Itoikenza, I didn't forget your request nor the fact that the "Commands" section is bad for now, but I can't guarantee any result in this since I don't know where (and how) those datas are stored. I'll try to figure it out when I'll go on Party's stats, but I can only cross the fingers for that :/

815

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-13 15:29:17 »

Thanks. To answer you, it might be possible, but I think Zidane_2 (him again !) made a program to see the world map already. I don't remember how it worked (if you could export the models or only see it) but I may try to add this feature in the future.

However, for now, my short-term plan is :
- add a battle scene texture importation,
- add a charmap texture importation (not really advanced : I think you won't be able to see the changes for the texts in the program, only in-game),
- add a section for the party's stats.

816

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-11-02 19:12:49 »

Hi. Long time no see.
Version 0.19 out, more to reassure you that I'm not dead than to be an useful update... 
- You can import models for Battle Scenes (geometry only, not texture yet),
- Exporting quads is fixed now (at least Blender can read them with most gfx cards),
- You may also change the colors a bit, as well as reorder textures, in Battle Scenes,
- You may now choose not to load texts (names, helps, etc...) when loading mods,
- Added 2 spell effects (Absorb Strength and Absorb Magic).

The bad point :
the size limit... You have between 0 and 2048 free bytes, which is really poor when it comes to models.

The good point :
textures should be importable soon (I guess it'll take much less time than geometry). I hope it will allow a decent way to get more space by optimizing the textures.

Note : the model's format must be .obj (the importer doesn't read the related .mtl file). Each faces be either a triangle or a quad and must have a texture and an UV mapping associated to it. If the program can't interpret some features of the model, it will display a warning and ignore them. Once a model is successfully imported, you must link textures ID from the imported model to the texture list available in the Final Fantasy file (Blender, in particular, tends to un-sort them).

Pfiou, it was really hard for me to make that importer. And I'm so busy with my studies these times...

Thanks for the thx, demeterf, by the way !

@ R51 : posting when I update ^^' speak of a coincidence.
About enemies, there are several things.
- Enemies are often duplicated : I think there is 1 instance for each different battleground (or battle scene) they may appear in. I'm not 100% sure that's the only difference but, for instance, the Big Dragon in the Mist Continent's mountain and the Big Dragon in the Forgotten Continent's plains are separated.
- Additionaly, there are enemy groups (or enemy formations) : they are variations of the same battle, with more or less enemies in it or different enemy types (eg. : Carve Spider or Carve Spider + Axe Beak). The Frequences are the probability you fall on each formation given you have already fallen on that battle. Frequency of 255 is same as 100, actually.

There is a help (F2), which I should update but still gives some useful informations (it strangely lags a bit though...). Don't hesitate to read it if that's not done yet ^^
Also, I tried to answer a lot of questions in this thread, so you may also read it if you have time to spare

Thanks for the feedback.

817

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-09-16 19:02:54 »

Update.
- Added Battle Scene exporter :
--- The loading time when you get on the panel is quiet long ; maybe I'll make it so all the BS are not loaded in one shot at this moment,
--- Y axis is inverted, as in Zidane_2's exporter, I don't know why but it doesn't work if I don't do that...
- Added controllers for dialog bubbles (in the "Texts" panel only) :
--- In the other panels, there is either no need for it (spells descriptions' bubbles are auto-sized, for instance) or it can't be edited at all (spell names...),
--- The preview is not 100% accurate (for the width mainly),
--- Additionaly, bubbles' size are sometime variable (ATE-picking dialogs, for instance, are smaller if not all the ATE are available).
- Added a "Help" window. It is some advanced help written there for the moment ; I don't know if I should add some tutorial-like help for now...

I understood a much more about TIMs images (that wasn't easy ^^'). It will be useful for all that is texture-related (and the charmap).

Also, some of you have already noticed, but I added a sample of "secret" dialogs, never actually used in the final version of the game but still present in the binary file. These 3 dialogs are not all the ones you can find, but there are some of them that can't be found in the US version of the game. You can read them in the 1st post of the thread.

PS. : the upload was frightenly fast this time :O
Tell me if there are bugs with the uploaded files.

818

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-09-12 20:44:40 »

Hey gledson, thx a bunch.
I already knew that but you actually made me remember a thing I wanted to test about it and it turned out I was lucky

So, to make it short, you will be able to modify bubbles' size as soon as the next release comes out (I guess this week-end).
Good luck for translating the game.

Also, battle scenes will be exportable. That's not a big news since Zidane_2 already made a tool for that, but you can expect to be able to replace them in-game soon (there'll be size limitations, as always, though :/ ).

EDIT : Update delayed. I had a bad bug, fixed now, but there are still minor things to fix. I'll do it tomorrow.

819

Troubleshooting / Modeling quads

« on: 2013-09-12 20:33:38 »

Hi.

I've got some problems exporting 3D models for my program. I use .obj as the output format and I thought it would support quads for its faces.
But it doesn't work well...

So I have several questions : does .obj really support quads? May the problem comes from my 3D editing tool (Blender) ? Or is that my graphic card that doesn't support quads (how do I check it?)

When trying to open .obj with quads (TITS lines like "f 1/1 2/2 3/3 4/4"), I end up with those quads being displayed with glitches. I attached screenshots...
It may also be because of the ordering of the vertices in the faces (it should be standardized though)... I'll test it tomorrow.

Quads displayed in "Solid" mode


Quads displayed in "Texture" mode


Quads as they should be displayed


What do you guys think?

820

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-09-04 16:53:43 »

@ eXistenZe : You mean the model? Textures are only drawings. I think it'll be possible to edit scripts (and add Beatrix to the party inside the story) before importing models for fighters.
And yes, you can add spells to commands with the limitations I explained (that is : special commands like "Attack" or "Defend" are hardly editable and you need to link commands or remove spells somewhere before adding others somewhere else).
You can link the 2 "Seiken" commands together as well as linking Dagger's "Summon" with "Eidolon" to gain 12 spell slots in the commands. I have no idea how I could increase the limit and I don't think I will before a long time.

@ Tenko Kuugen : It's mine too
Looking forward your mod.

821

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-09-03 15:21:31 »

I've all to be done, but, as said, I can use the work Zidane_2 made so far. For equipments, there are complications I explained somewhere about RNC compression and I still haven't found any working solution for it (I have still few ideas, though, but that needs testing). Not to mention I'm indeed having hard works to do and I can barelly do few tests for Hades Workshop...

But what do you mean by "steiner use beatrix textures" ? You know about UV Mapping, right? If it were only replacing a texture by another, it could be done by copying a block of data from somewhere to somewhere else.

I guess I'll go for an exporting manager next : to include Zidane_2's tools in the program and try to make the corresponding importing features. If I can find more datas on spells and commands, that'll be good too (but I'm afraid some of them are RNC-compressed in some versions).

822

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-09-03 08:05:57 »

The reflect one, yes, and it will take the addon in account whichever character use the summon.
Sorry for slow answer... And thx for the suggestion, that'd be better indeed.

By the way, the 4th spell flag (the 2nd "Unknown" one) is about Counter attacks while the 8th is about Return Magic (it's only used by ennemies). But you can't counter or return a magic if the attacker/caster is a friend.

There's also informations about enemies' "Auto-statuses" and "Initial Statuses" :

EDIT about Steam version: Some of the "Initial Statuses" don't display properly ; it is the case for "Silence" for instance, which is effective if given as an initial status to an enemy, but won't display the little bubble.

[General]
With the exceptions of "Doom" and "Gradual Petrify", the battles are not won because of an auto/initial status.
When a status can't be cured, it means it can't be cured by any way (spells, items, time, physical attacks...).
Color changing is quiet bugged. It doesn't change in the right color most of the time.
[Blind - Reflect - Silence]
Init : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can be cured.
Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Trouble - Confuse - Stop - Defend - Zombie - Virus (remove Evasion)]
Init : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can be cured.
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Shell - Protect]
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Haste - Slow]
Auto : displays the SFX but doesn't do anything else.
[Sleep - Float]
Init : status applied but cured immediately.
Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Berserk]
Init : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can be cured.
Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine, can't be cured but doesn't change the color.
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Regen]
Init : status applied but cured immediately (regen HP once).
Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Poison]
Init : status applied but cured immediately (deals damage once).
Auto : displays the SFX but doesn't do anything else.
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, deals damage faster than usual and can't be cured.
[Venom]
Init : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can be cured.
Auto : status can't be cured but only disables the attacks.
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, deals damage faster than usual and can't be cured.
[Vanish]
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine, can't be cured but doesn't make invisible.
[Mini]
Init : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can be cured. The enemy is however still normal-sized until it is hit.
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured. The enemy is however still normal-sized until it is hit.
[Doom]
Init or Auto : does instant death (with "Death" message displayed).
[Gradual Petrify]
Init : status is applied with a very fast countdown. Petrify in less than 5 seconds with any spirit value.
[Trance]
Init : makes the enemy shine and uses an attack countdown. The enemy stops shining and the battle bugs when the trance ends (for me, the next attacker was stucked and couldn't do anything until he died-revived while the others kept attacking).
Init + Auto : makes the enemy shine and can't be cured.
[Heat]
Init : status applied (color change) but cured immediately.
Auto : displays the SFX without changing the color but doesn't do anything else.
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Freeze]
Init : status applied (color change) but cured immediately.
Auto : displays the SFX without changing the color and only disables the attacks.
Init + Auto : status is applied at the beginning, works fine and can't be cured.
[Death]
Init : the enemy has greyed name and can't be targeted (or cancel the spells targeting it). Game crashs if the battle ends (if you run away...).
Auto : the enemy has greyed name and stops attacking when its HP reach 0 (and keep displaying its death animation everytime it's dealt damage) until it's healed.
[Jump]
Similar to "Death" but doesn't grey the name and disables the enemy's animations when it's hitted.

I'll try to think of a nice way to put informations like this in the "help" tab.

823

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-08-31 20:21:06 »

Carbuncle has different effects if Eiko's wearing special ores (Emerald, Diamond and Moonstone). The Ruby Light (gives reflect) is the original one. Same goes for Fenrir who is different when Eiko wears a Maiden Prayer.

824

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-08-30 17:56:16 »

I didn't succeed to make ppf patches work with ePSXe "Auto-apply ppf patches". Either we do it wrong or the ppf version my program makes is not compatible (it creates ppf 3.0). You can use ppf-o-matic instead since it perfectly works with it.

Since I'm at it, and since I'll surely have hard times working on that with the incoming end of the holidays, I'm updating one more time to fix a rare bug that corrupted the ppf exportation.

825

FF9 Tools / Re: [FF-IX] Hades Workshop

« on: 2013-08-29 13:58:27 »

Update again... I found other bugs.

This one is a bit more annoying, since data was not saved in HWS the way it should have been. That means I'll add a "debugging" version of the program : it will load HWS files you created with the previous versions - or at least what it can retrieve - and save them bugless. Just "Save Mod" after having loaded a HWS file. Note that the bug only happened on "Enemies" and "Texts" datas : if you didn't use them in your HWS, no need to download the debugging version of the program.
Once HWS have been saved back, you have to use the regular version also. It's really only for people who spent some time creating a HWS file for their mod and don't want to do that again.

Hades Workshop - Debugging version
TO BE CLEAR : do NOT download the program with this link if you didn't use the version 0.17 or 0.17b or if you didn't save any HWS file with it. Download the program from the 1st post of the topic instead.

Sorry about that... It should be fine now since I used the new version for some time and didn't have anymore bugs with HWS files.