Topic: Any info on Vehicle hacking?

[Bahamut ZERO]

I was wondering if there's any info on hacking Vehicles, such as editing their rise of height at liftoff, what music plays when you're on said vehicle, and well anything else on the subject really.

Essentially I'm tinkering around with the idea of making the Falcon act as a ship-ship, and not an airship. Since I figure the normal ship isn't an actual vehicle (being that it's only around during an event) my best bet would be to edit the Falcon's sprites and properties to achieve the same result.

Plus, no one really needs to have 2 airships in one game, so why not have a ship with sails to attach a drill to instead? 

[chillyfeez]

I spent a lot of time with this topic here:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1867.0
Your best bet is actually to replace the hovercraft, as it doesn't cause the screen to zoom out. Or the Black Chocobo. I had a lot of trouble with the zooming out stuff.

[Pinkpuff]

Will you have the drill dig a canal that opens up another section of the world, FF1 style?

[Bahamut ZERO]

I spent a lot of time with this topic here:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1867.0
Your best bet is actually to replace the hovercraft, as it doesn't cause the screen to zoom out. Or the Black Chocobo. I had a lot of trouble with the zooming out stuff.

Hmm you make a good point, being that now that I'm looking at the Overworld in FF4MapEdit and noticing there's only 1 "Airship Fly" type property. I have no idea why I was assuming Enterprise/Falcon had their own separate property type unless I was thinking of the heat shield effect or something.

Using the hovercraft for the boat I can easily just tweak the tile properties so it can move on ocean tiles, and 1 part of the river tiles so I can have some "shallow" water around docks to park the boat and swim around in. First thing I could think of outside of having players crashing their boats into the docks just to get off haha.

Will you have the drill dig a canal that opens up another section of the world, FF1 style?

That was my idea! I figure I could make make an enclosed landmass with ocean in the general area where Mist would be and make the canal go straight through where the mountain range normal appears. Once you get the drill you can plow right through them and then explore open sea. 


EDIT: Wow, your info made that absurdly easy. Thank you! Hovercraft is now a boat.

I just need to look over it again so I can hide the shadow effect, and figure a way to slow down the animation so it doesn't look like the ship is sailing through a monsoon haha.

Hmm.. I'm gonna take a further look into that thread you linked to, Chillyfeez. Maybe I'll luck out and find some info on how the Falcon's Drill functions.

Aaand couple ship pics to how it's coming along. :D

[Entroper]

Do you have to "land" it in front of a dock?  Or does it just land wherever?

My question would be how to make a canoe.  You could use the hovercraft, of course, to go over rivers, but then you're back to not having a ship, plus the hovercraft doesn't go with you everywhere, and it skips monster encounters.

[chillyfeez]

I know I found the place where the game turns off encounters for the hovercraft (and airships, and everything else) once, I'm sure I could find it again and manipulate it.
The rest of the canoe stuff would be tricky, though. Would you use it like an item, or would it appear automatically only when you needed it, like Link's raft in LoZ? Either way, you'd be talking about some custom routines. There's nothing like that in FFIV as yet.

[Bahamut ZERO]

Do you have to "land" it in front of a dock?  Or does it just land wherever?

What I did was take the solid river tile (the middle one), add the Landing property to it while removing the Obscures Half property, and placed it right in front of the harbor so it would appear like you have to park it at the dock.

If it looks right, I might make the tiles shorelines (or at least some of them) be parkable spots as well. I can't remember whether or not if that would make it closer to how the NES FF's Sea-Ship acted, but it would certainly open up some exploration possibilities!

I also found that if you save the game while riding a vehicle, loading said save causes some wonky effects, such as:

1) AIRSHIP = when the game loads, airship is set to either it's normal speed or some faster speed. The airship's animation frames go at normal marching speed, and the Mode7 effect is inactive. Some graphical glitches when landing, but everything is normal once you re-board it.

2) HOVERCRAFT = when the game loads, hovercraft will be at walking speed, and animation frames seem normal. Landing and re-boarding the hovercraft fixes the effect.

Hmm, I wish there were a way to just block access to the menu while on a vehicle, being that would keep players from experiencing that. Or if I had a grasp of ASM, I'd rig the menu button to transfer to the deck of a given vehicle like FF6 did for airships.

I know I found the place where the game turns off encounters for the hovercraft (and airships, and everything else) once, I'm sure I could find it again and manipulate it.

Whoa, that's incredible! If you happen to find that place again let me know, as I'd definitely enjoy some on-vehicle monster encounters!