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Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
US Version
ADVANCED HACK GUIDE
by JoKyR
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Version 2.0
12-21-2005
Copyright 2005 Joseph Kyle Rogan
This may not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private
use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed publicly
without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other web site or
as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation of
copyright.
All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their
respective trademark and copyright holders.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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I. INTRODUCTION
II. GROWTH ITEMS
II.i. The Basics
II.ii. Sample Codes
III. CHARACTER LEVELS
III.i. The Basics
III.ii. Sample Codes
IV. NAMES
V. VERSION HISTORY
VI. CREDITS
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I. INTRODUCTION
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Hello. This is my very first video game faq ever, so please be gentle. I'll
try to be as concise as possible. This guide was originally intended to focus
solely on hacking the stats of the four growth items (Sequence, Sapere Aude,
Peytral, and Acacia Hat). Other hackers have already done an excellent job of
cracking this game to pieces, and this was one of the only corners of the game
that had been left untouched. However, as you can see in my version history,
it was rejected. Twice.
Some folks on the message board were very kind, and politely suggested that I
find ways to add more codes. I thought long and hard about this, and decided
that I didn't want to repeat the work of others. However, there were a few
other tiny little areas of the game that I might be able to hack "a few more
codes" out of. These new codes really have nothing to do with each other, and
are united in this guide only by the common trait of being left out of previous
faqs. Indeed, none of them are really as useful as the growth item codes, but
you may be able to find an interesting purpose for them.
So, before you go any further, you need to know that you won't find any master
codes here, nor should you expect a comprehensive code database. This site
already has several faqs with all the standard item, character, and monster
bank codes. The only codes I'm including in this guide are codes that I
couldn't find anywhere else, in any format.
You also need to know that this guide is NOT intended to teach you how to hack,
write, or encrypt your own codes. Labmaster has an excellent set of primers on
www.cheatandwin.com to do that, already. This guide is written primarily for
seasoned hackers who want some new information about unexplored areas of the
game. I will do my best to explain how the game deals with these specific
topics, give you some addresses and values, and offer some sample codes in as
many formats as I know how.
I hope you find this helpful. But, if you want to alter the sample codes to
different values, I'm sorry to say that you'll have to learn how to do it on
your own. Don't worry, though. It's not that hard. In fact, this is the game
I learned how to hack with. It has a wonderfully diverse set of challenges
that have definitely prepared me for future endeavors. And, while I'm eager to
move on to other projects, I suppose I don't mind being forced to juice a
little bit more out of one of my favorite games of all time.
-Happy Hacking,
JoKyR
maestro at KYSOff dot com
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II. GROWTH ITEMS
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II.i. The Basics
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The four growth items are earned in the game by completing special Tournament,
Clan League, and Link Missions. An item is given as a reward the first time
one of its associated missions is successfully completed. These items cannot
be sold or traded. Without hacking the item's quantity, you can only ever earn
one of each. After you earn (or hack) the item, one of its stat values will
increase each time you successfully complete one of its associated missions.
The missions associated with each item are as follows:
Sequence: 40, Link 1, 2, 3
Sapere Aude: 41, Link 4, 5, 6
Peytral: 43
Acacia Hat: 42, Link 7, 8, 9
The stats that increase (and their original values) are as follows:
When you first obtain the item, the hex value is 0x00. Every time you
successfully complete an associated mission, this value increases by 0x01. The
hex value maxes out at 0xFF (255). Don't worry, the game won't loop it back to
0x00 if you keep completing missions. The stat value is equal to the original
value plus the hex value. However, the in-game value maxes out at 255.
II.ii. Sample Codes
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"Max Growth Item Stats"
These codes will set all four hex values to 0xFF, giving you the max stats for
all four items.
(Yes, this is a slide code, so it only needs two lines.)
704C4B3B AFDE9843
54FA8281 4E7BADFC
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III. CHARACTER LEVELS
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III.i. The Basics
-----------------
Standard experience levels for all characters (including monsters in the
Monster Bank) range from 0-50. Of course, characters generally start with a
level greater than zero. Levels greater than 50 can be hacked, but a character
that is level 50 or higher can no longer level up. He/she will continue to
earn experience points until he/she has 99 experience points, and then will
stop earning experience altogether.
I should warn you, though, that unlike some RPGs, or games like Pokemon, in
FFTA a character's level has NO direct effect on their stats. Changing a
character's experience level will NOT change their statistics, nor will it
affect their performance in combat (excepting, of course, a few spells that
only affect characters of certain levels). A character's statistics only
increase when they level up, and the amount they increase is independent of
their level.
So, why would you want to hack a character's level? I can think of three
reasons.
First, a character's level affects their competence when completing dispatch
missions. The higher the level, the better. Check out Terence Fergusson's
Mechanics Guide for more info on this.
Second, the average level of the members of your party determines the
approximate levels of the enemies you encounter in random engagements. If you
have a large party, but have only been concentrating on leveling up a few of
its members, then you will soon find that leveling up becomes difficult, in
general. The enemies you face will all have levels in the middle of your own
level range. So, the low level members will be too weak to survive long
against the relatively powerful enemies you face, and the high level members
will be getting very little experience for fighting relatively low level
enemies. Adjusting the levels of your characters can fix this problem, and can
be used to make enemies stronger or weaker, as needed.
Third, you may want to lower your characters' levels to give them more
opportunities to level up. Their stats stop growing after they reach level 50,
so why not knock them back down to zero and start all over? Or, if you're
really maniacal, you can use a pair of 8-bit constant write slide codes
(included in the sample codes section) to set their levels to 0 and their
experience points to 99. Then, every time they earn any amount of experience,
they'll level up... to infinity. Just four lines of code and your characters
get obscenely powerful, fast. Sure, you could just hack their stats manually,
but that takes quite a few more codes, and may not be as fun.
Each experience level is an 8-bit value ranging from 0x00 (level 0) to 0x32
(level 50). These values are located at the following addresses:
These codes are described above in The Basics. Keep your codes turned on while
you play, and your characters should boost their stats extremely quickly. I'm
only writing the PARV3 codes, though, because it's the only hacking device with
8-bit slide codes. Sorry. It shouldn't be hard to just mix the above level
zero codes with Labmaster's "Level Up" codes, though.
Unfortunately, this section is not yet complete. Some of it is pure
speculation. I still have a lot of testing and hacking left to do, but I've
uncovered enough information that other hackers may still find this section
useful. TetrisTheMovie seems to be the first to have broken ground on this
subject, and I highly recommend you read his "Clan and Hero Name changer codes"
before you read this section. I will be building upon and further expanding
the information in his guide. That said, here we go.
Any given name in FFTA is represented by an address that contains another
32-bit address, that points to a string of bytes which represent the individual
characters of the name. In other words, when the game checks for a name, it
goes to one address. Then, it is directed to a new address which contains
either the first character of the name, or a code for the starting point of a
name. Finally, it will read all the characters of the name until it reaches
the byte(s) designated as the end of the character string.
For example, when looking for the name of the main character, the game will
first go to address 0x02000080. By default, that address contains the 32-bit
value 0x02001F1C. At this point, if you've read TetrisTheMovie's faq, you will
hopefully recognize 0x02001F1C as the address for the first 16-bit character of
the name. If you've left the character's name as Marche, then it should be a
capital "M", or 0xBC80. The next two bytes would be lower case "a", or 0xCA80,
and so on until you reach the end of the name and the value 0x0000, which
signals the end of the string.
So, why does the game do this? Why doesn't the game just store the character
string at the original address in the first place? Because, as I'm sure you've
noticed, the vast majority of the names in FFTA cannot be customized. Again,
if you read Terence Fergusson's Mechanics Guide, you'll find several long lists
of almost all the possible names used in FFTA. These names are stored as
character strings in the actual ROM, and therefore can't be altered (easily).
Rather than creating a new character string in the RAM, the game simply creates
a 32-bit address that points to the location of the character string in the
ROM.
The original addresses (the pointers) for each character's name are as follows:
I suspect that there are similar addresses for the clan name, enemies, and
monster bank monsters. I just haven't looked for them all, yet.
It is also important to note that, for some unknown reason, the game uses two
different schemes for representing the characters used in names. I suspect
this has something to do with using the main character's name and the clan name
in the game script.
The first scheme is comprised of the 16-bit values found in TetrisTheMovie's
guide. This scheme is only used for the main character and clan names. There
is no code to signal the beginning of a character string, and therefore names
can be truncated by slightly altering the pointer address. (e.g. If your main
character's name is "Marche", then changing the pointer address to 0x02001F1E
will result in the name "arche".) To signal the end of a name, use the value
0x0000.
The second is an 8-bit scheme very similar to the 16-bit scheme. I haven't yet
tested all the values of this scheme, but it seems that most of them can be
obtained by taking the left two digits of the 16-bit values and adding 0x01.
For instance, "M" is represented by 0xBC80 in 16-bits, and 0xBD in 8-bits.
When using the 8-bit scheme, it is necessary to signal the start of a character
string with the value 0x01. In general, these names cannot be truncated. The
pointer address must contain the location of the 0x01 byte. Pointing an
address to the middle of a character string will generally result in garbled
pixels, or possibly a system crash. Similar to the 16-bit scheme, the value
0x00 is used to end a character string.
As far as I can tell, the two schemes are interchangeable. The main
character's name can be pointed to a ROM value, and secondary character names
can be pointed to the main character's string without problems. You could
probably, therefore, code the character string at 0x02001F1C using the 8-bit
scheme, but I would guess that this might cause problems for the game script.
At this time, I don't have any kind of list of the locations of the different
names stored on the ROM ready for you. However, I will say that they're all in
the 0x085XXXXX area. If you have a ROM, though, using the information I gave
you above, it shouldn't be too difficult to create a table file for the 8-bit
scheme, and use a hex editor (along with TFergusson's guide) to find the ones
you want.
Now, here's the part where we start taking advantage of all this information.
There are several ways that we can change names in FFTA:
1.) If you just want to change the name of the main character or your clan, you
can follow the method outlined in TetrisTheMovie's guide to change the name to
whatever you want.
2.) If you want to change a character's name to something on the list of names
programed in the ROM, you can change the value of the 32-bit address to point
to the new name's character string. Keep in mind though, that doing this for
the main character, clan, or any of the storyline characters (Ritz, Cid, etc.)
probably won't change their names in the game script.
3.) If you want to make slight alterations to a name that is programed in the
ROM, you may be able to use ROM patch codes to change the character string.
Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with that type of hacking, so I
can't help you much, there. And, I'm not 100% sure, but I believe such
alterations would only be temporary, and the codes would need to be used every
time you play the game.
4.) This last one excites me the most. If we can find an unused section of the
RAM, then we should be able to create our own brand new character strings, and
then point the original addresses to the new strings. By doing this, we could
change any name to anything we want! I haven't even started testing this,
though. I imagine it will take some work to find a good place to put the
character string, where it won't get any interference but will still be copied
to the game's battery file.
Well, that's pretty much where I'm at right now. I don't even have sample
codes for this section, yet. But, if any prodigious hackers out there want to
take this info and do something with it, please keep me updated on your
progress. I'm very interested to see what can be done.
Fin.
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V. VERSION HISTORY
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v.2.0:
12-21-2005
Changed name to "Advanced Hack Guide"
Expanded faq structure.
Added sections on "Character Levels" and "Names"
v.1.01:
12-14-2005
Minor grammar and comprehension corrections.
Resubmitted to GameFAQs, begging CJayC to reconsider.
Rejected by GameFAQs because "The topic of your guide is too narrow, and I've
seen these codes elsewhere, so it's definitely not that unique."
I'm not really bitter, but if anyone else has seen these codes elsewhere,
please let me know. That site probably would've saved me a lot of time and
effort.
v.1.0:
12-13-2005
Original document "Growth Item Hack Guide" focused only on hacking the stats
of the four growth items (Sequence, Sapere Aude, Peytral, and Acacia Hat).
Rejected by GameFAQs due to "lack_of_content".
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VI. CREDITS
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Special thanks goes first and foremost to Labmaster for, essentially, teaching
me how to hack. His FFTA guide, as well as his hacking primers have proved
invaluable.
Thanks to Terence Fergusson and TetrisTheMovie for their excellent guides,
which I have referenced several times in this document.
And finally, thanks to mikeTherob, bobeta, and DeMatt on the GameFAQs message
boards for their support and criticism.
