Apparently I've been on this site for almost a decade and have yet to make a single blog post. That alone may be a feat in itself; however I've decided its high time I start make a few blog posts. I'll try to do them once a week at the beginning of every week. For this first blog post I'm going to go over some of the resources you may need for modding Final Fantasy Tactics. My most recent mod - Final Fantasy Tactics Rebirth utilized many tutorials and sites extensively.
The first thing you will need is an emulator and an ISO of Final Fantasy Tactics. Fantasy Anime has an excellent guide on how to acquire all these programs. After you have become familiar with the process of emulation and can run an ISO; save states, screenshots, etc. Then you are ready to start modding.
The first and most important site that you need to become familiar with is:
It's a great site with a ton of resources and some friendly personnel. If you have questions they have both a chatroom and a forum, both which have a considerable amount of traffic.
One of the first things you'll need to download is FFTPatcher (most recent version is 0.478 at the time of this post). This nifty suite of programs has the ability to edit jobs, items, abilities, encounters and just about everything else you can think of. Tactext changes in-game text, Patcher changes mechanics/values, ShiShi imports/exports sprites, and ASM changes coding and mechanics. These programs are almost self-explanatory to use however you can always check the Help & Tutorial sections of the forums for more information. You can even download custom sprites from FFHacktics. Import them with ShiShi and then use this guide for fixing the formation and portraits.
With all the changes you have made to an ISO you can either distribute the ISO whole or make a patch file called a PPF. Here's an admittedly awful sounding and looking guide to creating your own PPF (it works but I hate watching it).
That's about all you will need to make a complete Final Fantasy Tactics mod. A surprisingly small amount of overall software and coding expertise is needed to create a mod thanks to the tools available.
Until next week - happy modding!
- Paul Street
