So, as I'm working on this project, the notion has been steadily creeping up on me... And I think it's about to hit critical mass: I'm running out of room!
It hit me hard just recently as I used up the last bit of space in dialogue bank 3, which is tiny anyway. But as I transferred some larger messages in bank 3 to bank 1, I started noticing that in bank 1, I'm already up to message 195. Then I looked in the ROM at the amount of space left in Bank 1 - ~800 (h) bytes. And in case you're wondering, the game is, at most, 1/3 complete.
...yeah...
If I polled the folks over at RHDN about the issue, I know exactly what I'd get: expand the ROM. Duh. But you all know as well as I do that doing so would break FF4kster compatibility, which is unacceptable.
So... I think I devised a feasible plan. I'm gonna take a page out of the PS1-era playbook and make the game several "discs." When I wrap up the chapter I'm currently working on, I'll have the last event set a specific flag that indicates "switch to disc 2." (Or Part 2, whatever). Then I'll put a constant check in the program loop for that flag. If it's set, the game will automatically jump to a routine that tells the player "you've completed part 1. Please begin part 2." Obviously Part 2 would have a similar check, which would tell the player "you haven't completed part 1 yet." The messages would instruct the player to read the hack's readme file for instructions on managing the multiple parts (how to rename the save file, where to put the files so that the emulator can find them properly), so that hopefully most lay players would still be able to enjoy the game.
And that would give me the freedom to use as much dialogue as I need to and not really worry about space consequences. Not that this has been an issue yet, but I've been a tad worried about the amount of events I'm using, too, and this would put my mind at ease there as well.
Any thoughts on all this?
