Topic: "Heal/Medicine" Command

[Paladin]

It was too overpowered with Cure3 in my first dry run-through of the early portion of the game with it.

I have Edward and Rosa with the Pray command to begin with.

Then Cid has Medicine when he joins and Rosa's Pray is swapped with Medicine when she joins in Zot...

The reason I went this route, currently, is rather than the command becoming useless later on in the game, like Pray,...it actually serves a purpose throughout most of the game.

[Deathlike2]

This may sound like an odd thought.. but if you had that ability to do that, it would be awesome.

I'm not sure if either sound easy or viable (it probably is viable, but difficult/annoying to do I suspect).

What you would do is either one of the following:

Create a duplicate command that executes almost the same thing... swap them in as appropriate via the event code.

or

Manipulate the command's behavior via event code. After a specific event occurs, you tell the command to use different values to use instead. This would also require quite a bit of tweaking, but it would probably cut down on the space used to trigger the behavior.

[Paladin]

Those are definately good ideas...

It might be possible to configure the dummied command ($15) or even Pray itself to use the Medicine command's code. Or...it might be possible to duplicate the medicine command's code into some empty space except using a stronger curative item and then map it to either the dummy command or Pray...that way you could work with two versions of the same Medicine command.

Swapping them when a character joins or rejoins is easy since each character instance has a hard coded command set. However swapping the commands based on an event is beyond my skill set at current. I'm not fluent enough with the ASM code to know what I'm doing there to create that kind of behavior, and I don't see any stock event codes in the event srcript that change (adds/removes) battle commands.

I think the trouble would be exactly that, each character's command set is based on the hard values in the ROM (they're not saved in the save file (or if they are they aren't used), when you load a save it appears that the game looks up each character's battle commands based on the character's instance and the hard data). Essentially you'd need to change those values in the ROM during execution (I don't think that's possible), or make the game somehow save the data and recall it from the battery file, using only the ROM data as "start up" data.

Even the game itself  "forces" Tellah to somehow auto-rejoin the party on Mt. Ordeals to do away with his recall command. There's actually a third instance of his character. The first two have the Recall command the third doesn't...

Unless I'm totally wrong on this (which I'll admit is possible)...but it seems like a pretty expert hack if it can be done. It would be killer sweet to do though.

[Lenophis]

I gotta say, nice job on that patch.

[Deathlike2]

Even the game itself  "forces" Tellah to somehow auto-rejoin the party on Mt. Ordeals to do away with his recall command. There's actually a third instance of his character. The first two have the Recall command the third doesn't...

It seems to me that if you are able to decypher that behavior, you should be able to allow "a version" of an existing character to rejoin via some script/event data handling.

Refer to this thread - http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=444.0

I think what Pinkpuff described in that thread is a "join" command that uses the "original state" of the character. My contention is that data is stored away in SRAM, which is updated with all the characters data, even if they leave the group permanently. It simply requires that data to be accessed via some event script of some sort that the game is anticipating or expected. It would have to access the character, and create a "newer" instance of an existing character, which would explain Kain's new equipment when he comes back and/or Tellah's command removal, but keeping his existing armor.

I hope that's an explaination worth diving into by others...

Mind you, this may bleed into 

I didn't think this thread would be this long (and I hate this command).

[Pinkpuff]

I think what Pinkpuff described in that thread is a "join" command that uses the "original state" of the character. My contention is that data is stored away in SRAM, which is updated with all the characters data, even if they leave the group permanently. It simply requires that data to be accessed via some event script of some sort that the game is anticipating or expected. It would have to access the character, and create a "newer" instance of an existing character, which would explain Kain's new equipment when he comes back and/or Tellah's command removal, but keeping his existing armor.

The Tower of Bab-Il documents describe something called a "shadow party" in RAM:

Code: [Select]

Known RAM locations outside of battle
=====================================
1000-113F Party data. Data for each member is 40 bytes long.
1140-127F Shadow party data. Data for each member is 40 bytes long.

I'm pretty sure the "shadow party" refers to the data for characters who left your party but will be returning. Notice that there is the same amount of space set aside for the shadow party as there is for the actual party; enough for five members. This would be consistent with the hypothesis that the game only stores the data for those that will be returning (Kain, Rosa, Tellah, Rydia, Yang) and discards the rest.

This means that if you want a character to rejoin without returning to their starting stats, that character must be one of those five.

[Deathlike2]

I think you can find creative ways of making that data happen... give me a moment to map it all out.

Edit: Here's the order in which the characters are removed, and readded (but it doesn't included initial introduction).

Stuff in paren are characters you may want back.

Code: [Select]

+1 Kain
+1 Tellah
+3 Rydia, Rosa, Yang, remove (Edward)
-1 Tellah
-1 Yang
0 remove (Palom), (Porom)
0 remove Tellah
-2 Kain, Rosa
0 remove (Cid)
0 remove (Yang)
+1 Kain
+1 "remove" FuSoYa
-1 Kain

If we're clever and figure out how to modify the shadow RAM, we could simply try to fit in 4 characters out of 5 in FF4A to swap in/out of the party. What would be required though is to not include FuSoYa and create a new copy of him for the Zemus battle.

That would be how it could be done. Edward is probably the best candidate to "kill off" since he's part of the cap casualty. If you can manipulate the latter 4, you can certainly keep them around IMO.

[Phoenix]

Create a duplicate command that executes almost the same thing... swap them in as appropriate via the event code.

This wouldn't be a difficult change, and I'm planning on doing it in my hack. You can simply copy the ASM code for a command, then tweak it and reassign it to one of the useless commands. I'm going to get rid of Peep and probably Cry, and make them into something useful, as well as write a new command for the dummied one.

Manipulate the command's behavior via event code. After a specific event occurs, you tell the command to use different values to use instead.

This would be more difficult, but I don't think impossible. We know other things work like this (the magnetic battles in the Magnus Cave, or the map loader which switches the hole to the underground), but I don't know at all how you'd get the game to check for this when it loaded characters. So, I'd stick with the first change if you're going to try anything.

[Phoenix]

Even the game itself  "forces" Tellah to somehow auto-rejoin the party on Mt. Ordeals to do away with his recall command. There's actually a third instance of his character. The first two have the Recall command the third doesn't...

This seems to be the easiest way to do it. Every time a character joins, there's a set of five battle commands for them, so you can just add the modified battle command that you'd need. This would require tweaking the commands like I said in my last post, but it seems the most doable by far.

Using the shadow party data to switch party members in and out is something I've considered trying to implement, but I haven't thought much about it because it's far off for me. The problem with this is any event dialog would need to have certain party members in to seem natural -- there's no "if...then" statements in events, so the same people always speak and move in the same ways. For example, you'd end up with Rosa saying something during an event, but if she's not in your party, it seems a bit crazy. So the switching option would either have to be at the very end (after all the events are finished) or you'd have to change the events so only the main character (e.g. Cecil) was speaking during events, which is kind of boring.

[Deathlike2]

I'm not even sure why this command gets attention, when Pray could be beefed up to use Cure2/Cure3 instead (the Cure3 version to have an increased hit/success rate and used later). Replace Sing with this and Edward sucks less (his Will Power sucks early game to be viable, but can be maxed out late game).

Also, if you still plan on wanting Edward, why not evict Tellah from this Shadow RAM? It's not like him gaining levels dramatically improves him at any point of the game... so creating a new instance of the character might not be so bad.

[Dragonsbrethren]

So the switching option would either have to be at the very end (after all the events are finished) or you'd have to change the events so only the main character (e.g. Cecil) was speaking during events, which is kind of boring.

I abandoned the concept (Actually prior to FF4a doing the same thing I planned) for that very reason.

[Phoenix]

I'm not even sure why this command gets attention, when Pray could be beefed up to use Cure2/Cure3 instead (the Cure3 version to have an increased hit/success rate and used later). Replace Sing with this and Edward sucks less (his Will Power sucks early game to be viable, but can be maxed out late game).

I've given this command consideration because I'm changing all the characters in my hack, and wanted to get rid of all the useless commands. Also, I've looked at the Pray subroutine, and will post my findings as soon as I have time.

I abandoned the concept (Actually prior to FF4a doing the same thing I planned) for that very reason.

I'm still considering doing it at the end of my hack, we'll see if I can get it implemented.

[Deathlike2]

I'm not even sure why this command gets attention, when Pray could be beefed up to use Cure2/Cure3 instead (the Cure3 version to have an increased hit/success rate and used later). Replace Sing with this and Edward sucks less (his Will Power sucks early game to be viable, but can be maxed out late game).

I've given this command consideration because I'm changing all the characters in my hack, and wanted to get rid of all the useless commands. Also, I've looked at the Pray subroutine, and will post my findings as soon as I have time.

I didn't say the Medicine command couldn't be improved.. but I've never thought it that useful since it doesn't scale (unless you didn't want it to scale). At least it is an improvement over the near-useless original...

[Phoenix]

Regarding the shadow party data:

Pinkpuff is right, it holds the characters who have left the party but will be rejoining. I've created a thread to compile information on this data here:

http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=473.0