Topic: Help--I broke something!

[fedorajoe]

I'm hoping somebody can tell me what I've messed up in my ROM hack.

Just started a new game so I could play through again from the start.  I found that several people in Baron and the Town of Baron are saying things that they aren't supposed to say until after Cagnazzio is defeated.  This is right at the very beginning of the game.

Everything else is like it should be.  The elite guard still blocks the entrance to the throne room, the Right Tower and treasure room are locked, etc.

The rest of the game seems to proceed normally.

So... what did I break and how can I fix it?

[JCE3000GT]

Did you keep backups of each stage of your progress?

If so then run a resync comparo in Hex Workshop (CTRL+K) and that will show you what's physically changed with the bytes.  Otherwise you can copy the NPC/Map data from a clean ROM and paste it over your ROM Hack and start over? 

I've always found it a good idea to archive every medium to major change in a separate ROM just for when this stuff happens. 

[fedorajoe]

I make a backup about once a week, but I did a ton of work this week.  So even if I do a direct compare, it's a lot of stuff to sift through.  I'm hoping someone can recommend a particular area to investigate.

Like, when you say NPC/map data...  Changing sprite values could be what caused this unwelcome change?  All I've done the last several days is work on streamling some of the more awkward parts of the dialogue and townsperson text.  But I didn't know if the triggers that I accidentally tripped would be somewhere in that section, or elsewhere.

[JCE3000GT]

By altering the AI for the NPCs that might of triggered the corruption.  Keep in mind that each NPC AI data has a pointer table that points to the size of each NPC's data if memory serves.  Dragonsbrethren might be able to go in-depth a little more.  My brain is fried right now.  lol

[fedorajoe]

Some good news for me, and for anyone else this happens to.

I had only updated one guy in the Town of Baron.  The very first guy who appears in the code.  I switched him back to his original text values, and all of the weirdness in the Town of Baron was undone.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, since my new text did not bleed over into the next text block.  So, I wouldn't have expected the change to cause problems.  But, whatever.  At least I don't have to start over.

If anyone has any advice on ways to update townsperson dialogue without encountering this problem, I'm all ears!

Seems like townsperson dialogue is the only sticking point.  I've reworked tons and tons of scenes and none of that editing has caused similar issues.

[JCE3000GT]

Oh, I think I see what you did.  I misunderstood what you were describing. 

As for your issue you might need to redo the NPC dialogue and relocate the text to an empty part of the ROM and re-point to it.