Topic: Chillyfeez's Mods, hacks, research notes, etc.

[Grimoire LD]

Hmm, Chillyfeez, I've been looking for what depends on what the sprite displayed is (there Has to be a way to free up class slots 0E,0F,10 to not display mini,pig,toad!) and while doing so I stumbled upon the character length of Jobs

$01/8FE5   A9 07   LDA #$07   A:D800   X:0000   Y:D8DC   P:envMxdIZc

Since I'm not too savvy with graphics or text by any stretch it wouldn't give me too much use or utility, but you might be able to find a use for it.

Here's an example of what I did with it...



There is loads of free space, a lot more than the game ever seems to use so 8 characters instead of 7 won't break the bank.

[chillyfeez]

That is pretty nifty. So changing that to a LDA $#08 would be the key, then?
I'm not sure I have immediate use for it , but I just might down the road.
I bet the fellas working on Project II would be interested in hearing this...

[Grimoire LD]

That is pretty nifty. So changing that to a LDA $#08 would be the key, then?
I'm not sure I have immediate use for it , but I just might down the road.
I bet the fellas working on Project II would be interested in hearing this...

Forgot to explain that,, yeah. All you'd have to do is change that to a 08. I was wondering as well, does each character have their own separate animation calls for their actions in battle? For instance Cecil doesn't glow Yellow when he uses his Dark Wave ability, but Rydia's special stance causes her to do just that. I was wondering if there was some set of animation bytes which tells each character what specific set of animation they should do?

This is sort of notable because Golbez by default lacks a Low HP Sprite which means it can't be a universal call which says "load this sprite in this position".

[chillyfeez]

The yellow is just part of Rydia's special pose. It's part of her battle palette that just isn't prevalent in any other pose. There isn't a different arrangement for each character - they just worked each character's sprites in such a way that each pose fits into those arrangements.
Because Golbez doesn't have the full complement of sprites, I imagine if you forced him into your party and he got into critical HP range, he would start to show some of Anna's sprites, but likely mixed up (as she also doesn't have a crouched pose) and with Golbez's palette.

[Grimoire LD]

The yellow is just part of Rydia's special pose. It's part of her battle palette that just isn't prevalent in any other pose. There isn't a different arrangement for each character - they just worked each character's sprites in such a way that each pose fits into those arrangements.
Because Golbez doesn't have the full complement of sprites, I imagine if you forced him into your party and he got into critical HP range, he would start to show some of Anna's sprites, but likely mixed up (as she also doesn't have a crouched pose) and with Golbez's palette.

I thought that would be the case as well, but no, he simply does not crouch when weakened. Nor does he use any animation for attacking or using a Special command. Only for Spell casting and item use are any of his animations used (and running, funnily enough.)

[chillyfeez]

Well, he has running because he has walking (needed to move forward to cast spells). I'm surprised about the rest of that, though. Does he simply stand still when those other actions are performed?

[Grimoire LD]

Well, he has running because he has walking (needed to move forward to cast spells). I'm surprised about the rest of that, though. Does he simply stand still when those other actions are performed?

That he does, I expected to see something odd occur when he was petrified (since it forces you into the weakened stance) but he just still stands in his default positioning. Casting, Item Use, and Walking appear to be the only animations used for Golbez, he was purely created Just for that single Auto-Battle, thanks Square...

[chillyfeez]

And dying, don't forget that one!
I wonder what forces are at work there... There must be some special case set for Golbez's sprites to prevent those other poses. Maybe I'll look into that on my next day off (Friday). As you've seen, I've resolved to attempt "hold B to dash" one last time. I kind of hate that I'm getting into that again, but the truth is, Dash is the one User Option I've purposely left out of TfW because I don't like what events look like when they begin with Dash toggled on... And If I can get it to work the way it does in other FF games, then I can use it in my own hack. But anyway, whether this new plan I have will work or not I'll be able to tell pretty quickly, so I may be able to finish that little venture - for better or for worse - with a good deal of time to spare. If so, then looking into this Golbez thing (that is, comparing what happens with him against my notes for the rest of my pose/stance research) would be pretty high on the list now simply as a curiosity.

[chillyfeez]

I figured out how to widen a bunch of menus. not a whole lot of use for this beyond expanding class names.
I should put together a how-to on the whole process for that, but until I can find the time to do so...

Here's a list of menu windows, with the LoROM addresses for each of their widths:

Code: [Select]

Main Menu Background Window: 1d820
Item Selection Menu: 1d8e2
Item Description Winow: 1d8ea
Item Target Window: 1d950
Cannot Use Window: 1d954
Menu Menu Window: 1d82c
Magic Selection Window: 1d965
Magic Target Window: 1d981
"Whom?" Window: 1d985
Selected Spell Window: 1d989
Current Equipment Menu: 1d9bd
"Status" Window: 1da1d
Window With actual Stats: 1da19
Custom Menu: 1dd5a
"Customizer" Menu: 1dd49
Save Slot Windows: 1dbd8
"Save" Window: 1dbdc
Time Window in Save Confirmation: 1dbfe
Save Yes/No Window: 1dbfa
GP Window in save confimation: 1dc02
"Done!" in Save Confirmation: 1dc63
Caster's Stats Windows: 1d969
1d96d
1d971
1d975
1d979
(yes, there are five separate widths, one for each party slot)

In most cases, there's only room on the screen to widen these menus by one or two tiles, but one is all you need for eight-letter class names!

Maybe someone will have some use for the other windows' widths...

 
I did the same for battle windows today... The first step (hopefully) in creating six-character command names.
I can get the command window to be wide enough, and doing so doesn't block anything more than a window that accommodates five letters, but I'm hitting a roadblock in getting the commands to display as six characters. The way they are loaded into RAM may be prohibitive. I might have to rewrite the routine to make this work...

[Grimoire LD]

Oy, menu expansion... it always seemed like a bit of a quagmire, but it would reveal quite a bit of useful information going forward so good work on this Chillyfeez! I would love to see some pictures of its applications.

You're probably aware of this by now, but just in case you aren't...

http://rb.thundaga.com/data/window_data.txt

It would save you a Lot of time, but I somewhat imagine this is what you're working off of.

[chillyfeez]

heh... no, I had no idea that existed.

I'm not sure I'm going to pursue this any more right now.
I've spent a lot of time trying to do things with battle windows, and I think they might be alittle out of my scope at the moment.

I think I'm putting this pursuit on the back burner for now.
Thanks, though...

[chillyfeez]

Not much to report on this, but I'm looking into the possibility of breaking the damage limit.
I know someone (Maybe JCE300GT?) worked on this before and got the actual damage limit to break, but never got the displayed damage to break.
This picture shows that it is possible for the game to display an extra digit.
It will require some routine rewriting, but I can also confirm that the section of RAM that is used to convert the hex damage into decimal does have enough space to use an extra digit.
That's all I can say at the moment, and I have no idea how difficult this task will be, whether I am capable of actually doing it, and if so how long it will take, but there you have it...

[Grimoire LD]

While that is Really neat, FFIV is... not the best game to break the damage limit on further thought. All enemies (unless they have a special script) only have 65,535 HP max. Granted I was always curious to know how much damage a 99 Wisdom Bahamut was Actually doing...

So while it may have limited use, it is still quite neat to see that you managed it in the first place.

[chillyfeez]

If I can get it to work, my plan would be to use it conditionally upon certain late-inning equipment... Either "ultimate weapons" or maybe a "break damage limit" relic. The limit would still be only around 16,000 anyway, because the top two bits of the upper "damage" byte represent healing and MP, so you're limited to what can be expressed in 14 bits. So you still wouldn't be able to one-shot monsters with 65,000 HP.

Anyway, the big thing is to get it to work at all first, and I think the biggest part of that for me will be figuring out how exactly the game converts the hex values into decimal, because I really am clueless about that, and the first thing I noticed was one of those routines that stores the value into RAM and does a whole lot of ROL-ing... So I have that kind of headache to look forward to 

[Digitsie]

Are you doing that more for the '40 years later' thing?

I'm actually kinda curious how the plot/script is breaking down.