Topic: Black Chocobo "Spawns" After Entering Big Whale

[Deathlike2]

I just realized that you can have every vehicle in the same place.. well, between Baron and Mysidia anyways. It was pointed out to me in a post @ Gamefaqs.

There is some sort of event trigger that causes a Black Chocobo to be spawned. This is triggered when entering the Big Whale for the first time. The Black Chocobo is spawned at Baron, so you can use the Black Chocobo to "pick up" the Enterprise and bring it to Mysidia...

New Black Chocobo @ Baron's Forest:


Nice pic of all the vehicles in one area...

[Dragonsbrethren]

Yeah, I used to do that for some reason.

[Lenophis]

I tried to do that, but never could because I didn't know how to get them all in one place. Never knew about that extra black chocobo.

[Deathlike2]

You know what's sad? It took me this long to figure out that Toroia's Black Chocobo Forest was in the shape of a Chocobo. 

[Dragonsbrethren]

I never knew until I was able to view the entire map at once, you just don't notice it in-game.

[Deathlike2]

I never knew until I was able to view the entire map at once, you just don't notice it in-game.

The map that comes with the game.. if it included that, it would've been nice.

[Phoenix]

I never knew about this, either. Learn something new every day.

I've been trying to figure out what is happening, but the event script is not behaving normally. The event that occurs the first time you enter the Big Whale activates NPC (a person/object) D8 (at least the mystery of why there's two events loading the Big Whale map is solved). However, when I activate this NPC separately, it doesn't seem to do anything. Also, swapping a character in Baron for the character D8 shows a Dancer, which seems right considering D0-DA are all clerics/dancers/Edward in Toroia.

Furthermore, I checked the location properties for that chocobo forest, and its person/object layout references 5F, which is empty. Switching another chocobo forest to this layout makes the forest empty, not have a black chocobo. Strange, huh? My guess is that there must be code somewhere that switches the person/object layout of the Baron chocobo forest depending on whether character D8 (or perhaps the Big Whale) is active or not. I don't know why, but that's the best I can come up with. I'll keep looking into it and see if I can figure it out.

[Deathlike2]

I never knew about this, either. Learn something new every day.

I've been trying to figure out what is happening, but the event script is not behaving normally. The event that occurs the first time you enter the Big Whale activates NPC (a person/object) D8 (at least the mystery of what there's two events loading the Big Whale map is solved).

Well, the summoning of the Big Whale allows for the trade for Legend to Excalibur Sword to be complete. The blacksmith will now give the finished sword to you. That doesn't involve entering the Big Whale.. but I could be totally wrong though (it is tied to the creation of the Big Whale though, for sure).

[Phoenix]

After following the thread of data through the ROM, I checked the speech data for the Smith and confirmed that it's tied directly to the Big Whale surfacing. The Whale surfacing sets an event flag, which is checked by the smith's speech data. He'll load the event of giving you Excalibur if the event flag is set, otherwise he'll load a normal message event.

[Deathlike2]

After following the thread of data through the ROM, I checked the speech data for the Smith and confirmed that it's tied directly to the Big Whale surfacing. The Whale surfacing sets an event flag, which is checked by the smith's speech data. He'll load the event of giving you Excalibur if the event flag is set, otherwise he'll load a normal message event.

Is this the same as the other event trigger you are talking about, or different? I'm playing Paladin's hack and reaching close to the same event (doing the trek from Cave Eblan to the underground at the moment).. so if that needs some testing, I should be able to look into what's changed.

[Phoenix]

No, different. The Smith's speech data relies on the event flag for the Big Whale surfacing. The Black Chocobo appearing is not, which is what I couldn't figure out. However, I think I have it all worked out, so I'll post a write-up here in a few minutes, once I verify it.

[Deathlike2]

No, different. The Smith's speech data relies on the event flag for the Big Whale surfacing. The Black Chocobo appearing is not, which is what I couldn't figure out. However, I think I have it all worked out, so I'll post a write-up here in a few minutes, once I verify it.

Sweet.

Hmmm, a section on frequently missed text would be nice...   

[Phoenix]

So, here's the explanation:

I went back and looked more closely at the location properties, and the chocobo forest by Baron had one unique value. After being thoroughly puzzled for a bit, I finally figured out that a value of 80 in that byte (byte 09) makes the location load the person/object data from the underground or moon, rather than the overworld. This checks out with all the other data: the underground/moon person/object placement data for 5F has the right number of chocobos, and the people/objects that are placed there match up with chocobo IDs in the underworld/moon set, including Black Chocobo D8.

What seems to be happening is that since the map for the Big Whale is technically part of the underground/moon maps, when it activates character D8 it can actives the one within the underground/moon set. Apparently the programmers decided to load chocobos from within that set for that map (it's the only one in the overworld that does this except the ending event maps, and the Astro Tower). This makes it seem like a last-minute detail to me, more of a fix than a planned implementation. This is supported by the fact that they didn't add it to the end of the Big Whale surfacing event script (which would have been a lot easier), but instead added a separate event that loads when you enter the Big Whale. It turns out that this event is loaded every time you enter from the ground, and the other Big Whale map loading event is when you land it. So, essentially character D8 gets activated every time you enter the Big Whale (although it doesn't matter because it never gets deactivated after that).

So, mystery solved!    for me

[Deathlike2]

Hmm, that would make sense. I think someone decided one day, "Hey, how the hell can we find a way to have all the flying objects get grouped together?"

Too bad that doesn't come with a bonus. 

[JCE3000GT]

Yeah, I used to do that for some reason.

So did I.  Just seemed, "symetrical" for me for some reason.  I did it on the south part of the Tororia forest down below the regular chocobo forest.