FF9 — Comprehensive ATB Enhancement

By RoSoDude

Posted by RoSoDude Jun 22, 2025 Updated 6 days ago

Game Name Final Fantasy IX

Platform PlayStation

Genre RPG

Language English

Status Complete

Type of hack Gameplay

Version 1.01

Release Date 2025-06-21

Downloads 750

Description

Final Fantasy 9 -- Comprehensive ATB Enhancement v1.01 by RoSoDude https://rosodudemods.wordpress.com/

Final Fantasy 9's ATB system has some notable flaws compared to other entries in the series. ATB is always running in the background regardless of battle animations, so commands can quickly pile up on the queue. This functionally caps the effectiveness of the Agility stat, lets buffs wear off too quickly, and makes auto-regen overpowered. Furthermore, it enables "Wait tricking" abuse with the Wait mode config setting, where the player enters a command submenu to pause ATB during player animations, but lets ATB resume during enemy animations to gain a turn order advantage. Finally, there is general agreement that the battle animations in FF9 are too slow, leading to very sluggish battles compared to prior entries.

Whereas a previous hack sought to speed up battles by increasing the speed of ATB alone, this only exacerbated the problem with slow animations and the command queue, and furthermore led to status effects ticking much too quickly in the background. This hack makes ATB gauges and other battle timers pause during battle animations, identical to my Comprehensive ATB Enhancement hack for FF6. ATB speed and rates for all status effect timers are more than doubled to offset the added downtime. The 3D scene framerate in battles is also increased by 33%, resulting in faster battle animations and a shorter camera swirl at the start of fights. Monster ATB has a small delay to account for higher Speed stats and instant command queueing. Instant fill ATB gimmicks are removed from several enemy AI scripts (Beatrix, Ozma, Hades, Kraken, Tonberries) to make these fights possible in the new ATB system. The end result should be a more tactical and robust ATB system which can be tweaked to the user's preference using the in-game config settings.

Included alongside the main hack is an alternate "CTB Wait Addon" patch which removes all active time elements from battle when "Wait" mode is selected, similar to FF10's CTB battle system (or the PC Memoria Engine's turn-based mode). See the separate readme for details.

The included patches are compatible with 1.0 and 1.1 (Rev 1) US ROMs. The hack should be compatible with pretty much every other hack for FF9, except for "Final Fantasy IX ATB Gauge SpeedUp" which is redundant. A special compatibility patch is required for use with Alternate Fantasy v3.2; see the separate readme for details. NOTE: If the game gets stuck on a black screen while loading (title screen or battles) when used alongside another hack, you need to use error_recalc or EDCRE to fix the EDC/ECC data on your ROM.

Source files for assembly and hex codes are included as a reference for other modders.

Hashes

Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 1).bin
CRC32: 49521342
SHA-1: 4bbd0132b25ee1cc436b45f2a665a21db0d6e9b4
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)
Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 2).bin
CRC32: dfef08c8
SHA-1: afdfe5f846909d7dfbee03cd09175ba76d31b070
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)
Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 3).bin
CRC32: cdc64cac
SHA-1: eb85348d88fce2c76bf6f3b616f54242878f5a46
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)
Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 4).bin
CRC32: 15a5e12b
SHA-1: 3392de8f304bc05ed7c845c1eb6d91b4021ecd2b
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)
Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 1) (Rev 1).bin
CRC32: 7a46108f
SHA-1: 8b8feaf91f63ae615d763803b094833dc20ca63c
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)
Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 2) (Rev 1).bin
CRC32: 575e60d5
SHA-1: 232c9b94f232006798f466c126a121d256e4122b
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)
Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 3) (Rev 1).bin
CRC32: a1d53b67
SHA-1: f7177bd1194ff1a642494cf867819d2d3b897c99
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)
Filename: Final Fantasy IX (USA, Canada) (Disc 4) (Rev 1).bin
CRC32: a4c892a4
SHA-1: ce78c21e3793e04e594429133b05ddf24ed3fc6b
Verified: Sony - PlayStation v.2026-06-15 11-55-46 (redump.org)

Staff Credits

Acknowledgements to FFHacktics community members Tallcall, Sardek, Xifanie, and RetroTypes for essential tips on MIPS assembly/PSX debugging: Acknowledgements to Tirlititi for Hades Workshop editor and technical information

Gallery

Relevant Link

https://rosodudemods.wordpress.com/

Youtube Video

Reviews

5 (1)

GroundThing 2025-11-03

5 Stars for CTB patch

I've never been a huge fan of the ATB system of Final Fantasy, since while I have no problem with reaction speed and timing as mechanics in games, that's not what I come to RPGs for, so the CTB enhancement turns a game I always wanted to love into a game I finally do. I can't speak too much to the ATB improvements without the CTB add on, since I did play a little bit with just the base patch, but it seemed solid, though still not 100% to my cup of tea.

See all 1 reviews

Last comments

kasem33449 2025-08-24

Tested the full turned mode, it works for the entire game, but as many mentioned in other comments, freeze, stop and (I presume) stone statuses are an issue if inflicted. Hope they get patched out one day.

rough.lynx 2025-08-05

Interesting. I guess it also affects statuses such as stone and stop other than freeze? Have not tested it yet. Hope it gets patched out, eventually.

RoSoDude 2025-07-23

Oh, I get why freeze is an issue. Squaresoft made it so that freeze stops a character's ATB and stops them from executing any queued command, but it doesn't actually take the move off the queue (nor stop the player from queuing one if they had full ATB when they became frozen). This is a problem for the CTB Wait Addon since it stops ATB for all participants either 1. If a command menu is open 2. If a command is queued This design keeps things moving without letting the queue get backlogged. However, it doesn't play well with freeze status because the queued command prevents time from passing, so freeze can never wear off and the queued command can never execute, so the battle gets stuck. What you can do to get around this is to press L+R to flee until the character is unfrozen. Fleeing with CTB Wait reverts to Active ATB mode (pausing only during animations). In a bossfight you'll never actually flee, of course. I believe this would work even if your entire party were frozen, as I check for the fleeing input byte which is set independently from ATB. I may eventually run to fix this properly, but it will be difficult. Instead of just checking if the queue isn't empty, I'd need to check if the queue points to a character under the freeze status. For that I need to study the RAM to know how to interpret the queue pointer and to find the byte that stores freeze, and I'd also need to carve out some space for new assembly code by optimizing some other subroutines. I'll give it a shot sometime, but no guarantees!

wicked.partridge 2025-07-23

Not sure if this happens to you, but I'm using the CTB Wait Addon with no other hacks, and at the second battle against the broken 3th waltz at cd2 each time he uses freeze on someone who is "posing" to take an action, the battle goes on, but no one can take an action. If used normally against one of my team, the freeze causes no trouble.

RoSoDude 2025-06-28

No, those are only included as a reference for other modders, everything there is integrated into the main patches.

interim.tick 2025-06-28

what about the patches in the source files folder? Do they need to be installed too?

RoSoDude 2025-06-22

I've updated the patch to v1.01. Changes: [*]Removed instant ATB fill gimmick from Beatrix AI script [*]Doubled frequency of random rolls for fleeing [*]CTB Wait Addon: pressing the "skip turn" button can be used to pass time

AlucarD 2025-06-03

Perfect then, thank you for your hardwork to create this hack (FF IX really need this). And also thank you for answering my questions. I might as well waiting for the v1.01 to be released, I'm not in hurry or anything :) Just wanted to revisit FF IX in the best way I could :) So, I can safely patch with this order right? If I wanted to use those 2 hack (Excalibur II Patch & God Save the Queen) Patch installation order (1.0 ROMs): 1. Alternate Fantasy 2. Comprehensive ATB Enhancement (or CTB Wait Addon) 3. Excalibur II Patch by Hyadex 4. God Save the Queen by Almagest 5. Alternate Fantasy Compat Patch Or I can add those 2 hack after Alternate Fantasy , Comprehensive ATB Enhancement (or CTB Wait Addon), Alternate Fantasy Compat Patch ? Sorry if I bother you too much, since you mentions Alternate Fantasy has some special considerations. So I just wanted to make sure I patched it with the right order.

RoSoDude 2025-06-02

Yes, it is compatible with all of those, as well as with the Unleashed difficulty hack. Most of them can be patched in any order. However, Alternate Fantasy has some special considerations: Patch installation order (1.0 ROMs): 1. Alternate Fantasy v3.2 2. Comprehensive ATB Enhancement (or CTB Wait Addon) 3. Alternate Fantasy Compat Patch This is needed because my patches overwrite some monster AI scripts to delete instant ATB fill gimmicks that would make the fights impossible, and Alternate Fantasy has tons of changes to AI scripts already. I should also note that I'm pretty sure Alternate Fantasy replaces/fixes Thunder Slash already. By the way, it was recently brought to my attention that the AI scripts for all 3 fights against Beatrix have this issue if one of the conditions to end the fight (10 turns have elapsed or her HP drops below 10,000) while Freya is in the air, so that will be addressed in a soon to be released v1.01 of my hack.

AlucarD 2025-06-02

Does it work/compatible with all these 4 hacks? It will be perfect for a replay/revisit FF IX if it is compatible. 1. Final Fantasy IX: Alternate Fantasy by Tirlititi 2. Excalibur II Patch by Hyadex 3. God Save the Queen by Almagest 4. Steiner’s Thunder Slash Fix by Chronosplit https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2530/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7332/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1984/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3182/ If it is compatible, do the order of patching matters?

Cloudstrife7894 2025-04-05

This looks like a nice hack, be handy for a replay. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1984/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7332/ Does it work with these two mods?

Andrewskey 2025-04-05

Really cool to see another hack like this come into fruition after how good the last one for Final Fantasy 6 was. Hope this gets a lot of people who were driven off by the battle pacing for this game to try it out now! Gotta get through a few more RPGs first, but I can't wait to make my first FF9 experience with this later in the year.

RoSoDude 2025-04-05

Yep, should have no problem with those mods (or any other besides the redundant ATB SpeedUp). If you have any problems with black screen on loading the game or battles when using another mod with it, use error_recalc to fix EDC/ECC checksums. They're updated on my mod but not always with others https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1264/