Final fantasy tactics betas

see rewrite to my previous post above.

 

very interesting! what is the use for the debug numbers and the flags?

 

well, as the images in my last post show, the debug number allows you to jump to a specific battle (although, I'm not sure what the sequence is, and why it allows for 3-digits). maybe this weekend I'll mess around with it a bit more.

I have no idea what the flag entry does (and it wasn't documented in the correspondence that I received from square soft.

 

hey - thought i'd mention that seem of these features have been documented. debug features can be re-activated in the release version with a gameshark, though the extra options appear as invisible positions below the regular menu - so it's pretty cool to see what it used to look like!

the battle option lets you use to any map in the game, including several half-finished ones that didn't end up being used (i think 015, 033, 098 are some) and some ones that appear to be made for testing movement (117~119, 125). the party menu contains every pre-made enemy party that you can meet in a random encounter or scripted battle, as well as all the groups of characters used for the story cutscenes. ones towards the end are mostly oddball groupings of random characters, like all the zodiac monsters together or a team of sixteen dancers with random equips.

there are faqs for the world map and battle debug modes at gamefaqs, and the former has lists for both battle and party options. i don't think anyone ever figured out what the flag feature did though, which is surprising since fans have unravelled so much of the game (check out the battle mechanics guide by aerostar if you haven't before).

 

his debug version isworking better and have no graphical glitches in menus. the one you access from GS (i have the codes too) also doeasn't allow to pause game with 2nd pad, to control everybody (there a code for that also tought) and to see the battlefield from above

 

yeah, i read, chief. i was just saying - it's nice to see what the menu actually looks like, in a real debug version like his copy, because all i've ever seen are the glitchy invisible options in the release version. and though the flag option seems to be a total mystery, at least the two obvious features have been extensively explored by fans.

 

any difference in the beta ver than reg game?

 

still trying to find a tool that will allow me to compare the files effeciently. there are way too many files on the cd's to perform the comparison manually.

 

I have a pre-alpha version of Tactics. Been along time but I think there was some Japanese text and some English text. The debug mode was there as well.

 

pre-alpha? damn. any chance you could be talked into taking some screenshots?

the game's style went through a considerable shift at some point in development, with mostly changes to the various maps but some alterations to character sprites as well. to the best of anyone's knowledge, all this early material has been excised from the release version - at one point, fftactics.org had explanations for much of the cd's contents, but the site seems to be down now.

if you could get a picture of the "zirekile falls" map it would be easy to tell if your copy has anything from this time, as that particular area had some hard-to-miss changes.

 

By pre-alpha, I guess that means localization wise, right ?

I usually just extract all files from a disc onto a folder on my harddrive, then do the same with all files from a different version of the same game and put it in another folder (keeping folder structure) then I use something called "QuickSFV", which integrates into your shell, to just right click on the first folder and select "Create SFV" and let it make the SFV, then I swap the folder names around and right click on the .SFV file (or folder) and tell it to scan/check it up against the SFV.

Then it'll give a list of all files that matches and miss-matches the CRCs in the SFV.

You should probably do a SFV of both versions and run both up against eachother, as in some cases, files are added and removed between versions. (and if the .SFV doesn't contain an entry for a file, it wont tell you it found a file that was not in the SFV, but ofcourse it'll tell you if it can't find a file that's supposed to be there accourding to the SFV)

Depending on what's different, it might actually be easy to make the necessary changes to a final to activate/implement material from a different version. (Usualy by file swapping, but in some cases, the differences are as minimal as a few flags in some sort of config like file)

 

I say "pre-alpha" because thats whats printed on the disk. It says "Pre-alpha."

 

hmm I'll have to read this again when I'm sober.

 

And I suck at explaining when I don't proof read and edit before hitting "submit post"



Anyway, forgot to mention that if there are XA streams (XA music or FMVs) on the disc, you should check the LBA for the file(s) for the XA streams in something like ISObuster and then extract them correctly through cdrwin by just doing a rip of the specified data range (the LBA start/end of the file(s)) to get a correct 1:1 extraction of the file on your HD.

 

just one huge .xa file
; 59674988 05:07.02 1997-04-29 OPEN\ENDING.XA

edit:
I ran another program today against the 2 .sfv files and found that there are 32 files that have size differences and a host of others where the date/times are different (but the file sizes are identical). most importantly are the two files in the EVENT folder, DEBUGMAP.OUT and EVTOOL.OUT which are 0-byte files on the retail version.

 

very interesting! i would still love to put my hands on it and in that pre-alpha version....

 

can you take some pics of the game? there is any big differences?

sorry that i was so late in noticing but i was internetless for 20 days

 

mmmmmhhhhhh nothing?

 

Ok I found this one again. Here are some pics.

 

nice, nice, really. can't you go a little farther on? the first part of the games seems the same (beside debug goodies). i would expect a pre-alpha to be quite different.

by the way, i wonder were jmratkos is hiding lately