Final Fantasy Hasted (FFH)
This hack is intended to make Final Fantasy 1 for the NES a brisker, less-tedious experience. Many other hacks add a run button, and the Battle Speed option always increased battle turn speed somewhat, but other aspects of the game were still slow in many hacks.


Patching instructions:
Apply this patch after other major hacks you wish to use (such as Final Fantasy Restored or Grond's Final Fantasy), consulting the chart below for which FFH patch to use. Then apply any optional patches included in this archive that you wish to use, or any minor hacks desired. Note that your ROM must have a 16-byte iNES header before patching.


Compatibility:
*Final Fantasy Restored (FFR) v1.0: FFH was built around FFR and thus it is strongly recommended, as it enables all of the functionality of FFH. Use the 'for FFR' version of FFH.
*Stock game (US version): Standard (full)
*Final Fantasy Ultra Champion Edition v1.1: Standard (full)
*Dynamic Action Selection Unofficial Update v1.0 (can be combined with major hacks): Standard (full) so long as you don't use autorun.
*Final Fantasy++ v1.5: Standard (limited)
*Grond's Final Fantasy v3.22: Very Basic
*Manall's Final Fantasy v2.2.1: Very Basic, although it only speeds character swapping
*Final Fantasy Negative One v2.0: Very Basic

In general, hacks with extensive code changes may only work with the Basic or Very Basic patches, and Standard (limited) has lower risk of graphical conflicts compared to Standard (full). Minor hacks such as Leviathan Mist's pitch corrections, or Chickenknife's FFR rebalancing, should have good compatibility.


Changes (each patch contains all changes of ones listed above it):
*Very Basic:
In battle, characters walk forward and back, attack, and celebrate at double speed. Spellcasting is a bit faster than normal.

Swapping characters in the rearrange menu now happens at double speed.



*Basic:
The flashing associated with spellcasting being made faster caused it to be more irritating, and thus the flashing was removed (the optional 'Seizurrific' patch restores this.)

The combat fleeing animation is a bit faster.

Transitions into and out of battle, for the rearrange and character menus, and for entering/leaving an area map, are now double speed.



*Standard (limited)
In order to make ROM space for the following code hacks, anomie's RNG improvement patch was applied, which frees up substantial space in addition to improving the game's random number generation.

At the main battle menu, hold Start + Select in order to set all able party members to Run. (aka Autorun)

Attacks and spells targeting defeated enemies will automatically move to the next living enemy in the formation instead of being Ineffective. Does the same for allies targeting a defeated ally. (You can use the optional 'Ineffective Restoration' patch to remove this functionality.) Doesn't affect wielded equipment or multi-target effects.

When targeting enemies in battle, you can now press Left or Right to change columns, with limited ability to navigate gaps. 

When in equipment shops, character posture now indicates whether or not they can equip a selected item. For equippable weapons, they further indicate if its attack power is greater, equal, or lesser than that of their currently-equipped weapon. (Monk barehanded damage is not calculated in this comparison, however). To support this feature, dead characters now appear as ghosts in buildings and menus. 

When in the Status screen, you can press Select to switch between characters.

Character direction is now preserved between transitions. You will face downward when leaving a shop, however.

The map screen rendering time was cut by a third.



*Standard (full):
On the map screen, mountains are now light gray instead of light green. The reticle is now smaller and obscures the area less. Waterways are more accurately represented, and canals are now blue.

The broom sprite no longer has a stray pixel in one of its frames.



*for FFR's Chaos Rush Port (an alternate retranslation ported to Final Fantasy Restored):
Character HP is displayed under their name on the rearrange screen.

When in the Magic screen, you can press Select to switch between characters.

A few text strings were corrected.



*for FFR:
Fixes a couple additional text strings in FFR's script.




Optional patches:

*Antigrind patch:
Monsters now give 3x money and XP in the southern continents (for the most part), and 2x in the northern continents. Spell costs were reduced so that White/Black Mages now cost roughly as much to outfit as Fighters, earlier on. Status-curing items were made cheaper so that no regular battle should be a net loss of money.

*Seizurrific:
Restores spell flashing removed in all but the Very Basic patch.

*'Ineffective' Restoration:
Restores characters getting 'Ineffective' error messages, when targeting dead enemies or allies, instead of the action being retargeted.

*Unhasted:
Restores battles to their original speed.


Known issues:
Changing columns in battle is slightly buggy with the 2+6 formation.
When using Autorun, there is sometimes slight sprite corruption for one frame.
Due to how the original game's map-screen rendering algorithm works, there are some stray blue pixels where there is no water, and other areas with water where there are no blue pixels.
Direction isn't always maintained when switching screens, particularly with hacks other than FFR.
The Japanese ROM has addressing and code changes that make this hack incompatible with it, even with Chaos Rush's translation patch.
In the Armor shop, there's no indication of if an item has higher defense than a character's same-slot item.
These likely won't be fixed, due to ROM space issues and/or difficulty.

Changelog:
1.0 Original release
1.1 Added optional Unhasted patch. Magic screen character switching for FFR versions. Due to severe ROM space limitations, hack now considered feature complete.

This hack may be modified or incorporated into other hacks, with attribution. FFH made by Mentil. Original PRNG improvement code made by anomie.