Topic: FF2/4/4A Command+Magic Questions

[Deathlike2]

How much do Slow/Fast(Haste)/Protect/Shell change?

Also, how much Wisdom(Magic Power) is increased by Palom's Boast (Magic Power increaser)? If used for someone with White Magic, does it improve that (just wondered)?

I've noticed that Yang's Power Attack (not even factoring in the Discipline Armlet in FF4A) does a better job of attacking elemental Flans (using the appropriate elemental Claw) than Kain's Jump (using the appropriate elemental spear)... how's that actually calculated?

[Dragonsbrethren]

I'm pretty sure I've seen Protect and Shell documented somewhere. I distinctly remember that they can only stack three times but I don't remember where I read it and I've never tested it myself (I never really use those spells).

[Deathlike2]

You don't have an answer to the other questions? 

I thought Protect+Shell can be stacked forever, but up to a limit (statwise, like 255 defense or something)... it works nicely against FF4's amnesiac Yang.. to the point where his kicks registers as Miss!

Anyways... regarding weapon cast spells..

Are those spells custom written or do they simply just "pass different parameters" like in function calls?

Also, were shields meant to have spells? A number of the elemental shields (and the Aegis Shield) have the ability to multitarget... even though they did nothing. I think the original intention was to add like a FF1 type elemental protection system by using the Shields to cast spells (like the Fire Shield would cast the equivalent of AIce in FF1).

[Dragonsbrethren]

Unfortunately no, I don't. I know very little about the inner workings of the battle engine, sorry.

For the weapons that cast magic, there's a "casts magic" bit that enables the weapon to target enemies when used as an item and a byte that defines the spell they use, but neither of those have any affect on whether the weapon can cast magic or not. I'm fairly certain which weapons can are hardcoded for whatever reason, the animations their spells use seem to be hardcoded as well, JCE made the Slumber Sword into a Bolt Sword in FF2usHT yet it still used Sleep's animation while casting Bolt2. I haven't played around with the magic-casting weapons all that much though, beyond finding out I couldn't make the Ragnarok cast Flare in one of my earlier FF4 hacks.

As for shields, they have no special properties so which ones can target enemies must be stored somewhere else.

[Phoenix]

The visual effects for using items in battle is specified from 7D6E0 to 7D7DF (ROM with header). There's 1 byte per item, with the value corresponding to the spell number (e.g. 0E is Cure1, 1E is Fire2). When I found this I originally thought it was the spell cast by the item, but that clashed with someone else's information, so I tested it today and the visual effects are indeed what I had found earlier. You can make a Fire-casting item look like a Cure spell, a healing-type item look like an elemental spell, etc. It's kind of fun, actually.    Hope this helps . . .

[Dragonsbrethren]

Cool find, I was hoping that the presence of an animation would be enough to make a weapon with a spell set use magic but that doesn't seem to be the case. Nevertheless this does allow far more customization of the weapons that already cast magic, we don't need to confine ourselves to using the same spell animations anymore.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Finally found them:

0x79070 (Unheadered): 1 byte per weapon, if byte is non-zero the weapon will use its spell, byte is the spell's power.

[Phoenix]

Nice find!  I was wondering what that data was . . . I had everything around it, but couldn't figure out what it was. You're sure it maps to spell power? What are the limits? For example, if you drastically increase the Firerod's power but leave the spell the same (Fire1), how effective is it? Just wondering if you've tried it. If not, I'll try and do it today or tomorrow...

Edit: Also, does anyone happen to know what is at 7A010-7A24F (headered)? It's 576 bytes, and it looks like 144 sets of 4 bytes each. It's the only other data in that area that I can't figure out, and I thought someone might know. It's sandwiched between the Spell Effects data and and the Spell Visual Effects data, so it probably has something to do with the spells. Then again, knowing how things are organized, it could be something completely different. Thanks for any help!

[Phoenix]

I did a few tests, and from what I could determine, a weapon spell power of 01 roughly equals a wisdom stat of 3. Cecil casting Fire1 with wisdom 6 did about the same damage as a Shadow Sword casting Fire1 at a spell power of 02, and Cecil casting Fire1 with wisdom 17 did damage about the same as a stat of 06. I changed the stat to FF, and Fire1 was doing anywhere between 3000 and 5600 damage -- so it does appear you can make it pretty super-powered. I tested FF with a Fire2 spell, and did 9999 damage consistently (at least to beginning monsters).

I didn't do tests with any other characters or spells, so if anyone wants to gather more data to back my findings up, post here.

[Paladin]

Really cool finds on the item spells guys!

I was playing with it the other night and you can do some really cool stuff.  Especially since you can specify any spell routine that is cast by Byte 0x03 in the Table at $79300 to have any visual/audio FX set you want with the table you've found!

One really interesting behavior I found was applying the Summon spells to an item. That is use the spell visual effect reference byte table to specify one of the summon spells (NOT the bytes that reference the spells in the menu, but the bytes that reference the actual spell the summon monster casts e.g. use "Goblin Punch" @ 0x4D NOT "Goblin" @ 0x31)

When you do that, and I'll keep with the Goblin example, the Party disappears and Summon graphic appears as if you had actually summoned the monster, but the monster's palette is wrong.  The summon monster then performs the appropriate attack but persists (the clear graphics routine is apparently not called) Nor does the party reappear, the Goblin (in this case) Just sits there where your party should be. But this doesn't break the game. The party is actually still there and can still be commanded when their turn comes up! If you have the character that used the item with the summon spell again the Perstant summon graphic will simply attack again. It's almost like replacing the party with a monster that will keep attacking for you, cannot be targeted or attacked, and is effectively shielding your party. That's the really interesting behavior...

It would need more testing, but I  noticed that while enemies could target the "invisible" characters they always missed...at least from what I saw.

[Deathlike2]

Maybe you should take a look at how the Grimore behaves...

[Phoenix]

Note about Protect/Shell only stacking three times:

This is false. I casted it 30-40 times on Cecil, and the damage against him consistently went down.

[Deathlike2]

Note about Protect/Shell only stacking three times:

This is false. I casted it 30-40 times on Cecil, and the damage against him consistently went down.

The best test AFAIK is the battle vs Yang. The only bug though is that it isn't supposed to make Yang miss.. just deal 1 point of damage. It is really strange how the game makes Yang's Kick behave differently here.. (I'm trying to remember if Yang's Kick misses the Imp Captains before engaging the MomBomb.. I don't think it ever misses at all ever).