Topic: Developing FF4kster: a comprehensive editor for FF4

[Rodimus Primal]

Is there a way in FF4kster to expand the item descriptions to include items that do not currently have a description?

[Pinkpuff]

Is it sad that I don't actually know? LOL

Sorry everyone that I haven't really touched this project in ages. I feel like I really should finish the overworld editor at the very least (and ideally fix all the known bugs) before abandoning it completely but I'm a bit stuck with regard to reading the graphic tiles (they're stored differently from the way the "inner" map tiles are stored, of course, because that would have made sense) and the longer I leave it the more I forget about my own code and have to relearn.

In the meantime I've been poking around with NES homebrew coding and have made some progress. I can display backgrounds, read controller inputs, and dynamically update background tiles based on said inputs without flickering or graphical artifacts. It may not sound like a lot, but it took a lot to get even that far. I've also been working on creating a tabletop game using the same fundamental idea and mechanics I used for my "Final Fantasy Card Game" (http://timecave.net/games/ffcg/) but without all the SE copyrighted content, the idea being maybe I can release (and/or sell?) something similar to a wider audience.

I also find I've been devoting less time to my projects in general lately due to a combination of working, slacking off, and playing games. I've been particularly absorbed in Brave New World. I've never been a fan of FF6 in its original form. It certainly isn't the worst FF by any stretch of the imagination, but for me it was sort of the beginning of the end for Final Fantasy. Ironically, that kind of makes the "destruction of the world" scene (and general motif) particularly poetic. Anyway, Brave New World basically fixes all my beefs with the game as it was designed originally and makes it into the game I had somewhat imagined and/or expected it would be. Dare I say, the game we should have gotten.

Anyway sorry for the meandering rant. Point is, progress is slow but I'm still kicking ^_^

[Bahamut ZERO]

Glad to see you still kicking around Pinkpuff! Congrats on your progress in NES homebrew.

I honestly can't think of many bugs that are in the editor (or maybe I haven't messed with parts that are buggy yet).  Hell, I can only really think of one off the top of my head:

In the Triggers Editor, you can't set a trigger's Y placement beyond 127 for some odd reason.

This becomes a bit of a problem when playing around with Overworld triggers for me at times, as I've been attempting to slowly make a new world map for my project using FF4ED.

Hmm speaking of FF4ED, it comes with a document containing a slew of useful information. Perhaps it might something useful about the Overworld ? I'll attach it just in case.


Edit: Also, @Rodimus -  In the Features editor there's an option called "Descriptions".  It shows the item at the start of the list, and the end of the list that have descriptions.

 I'm not sure how many items in total can have descriptions at one time, but I have from the start of the gloves down to the Package set to use descriptions in my project.

[Rodimus Primal]

That most certainly opened it up. I'm hoping I can fit small descriptions for all.

[Bahamut ZERO]

Figured this would be the best thread to ask:

Is there any way to make the background scroll with the map when working in the Maps Editor?

 Recently I started an overhaul of the town tileset and I've been exploiting background maps to make everything work right. The basic elements are on the background map (grass, roads, water, and wall/building parts when needed) while the main map has the rest of the elements (buidings/doors/trees etcs).

Only problem with this setup is that Background maps stay stationary at a fixed position in the editor. Right now I'm using two instances of FF4kster with my project loaded up so I can tell what I'm looking at, but if there's some scrolling option I'm overlooking I'd love to know haha.

If there isn't, it's all good. Since I'm only planning to use this method on Town Exterior tileset maps I can make do with the little setup I've got going.

[chillyfeez]

AFAIK, it doesn't have that option but... Pinkpuff? You listening in on this one?

[Pinkpuff]

Is there any way to make the background scroll with the map when working in the Maps Editor?

There is currently no such functionality in FF4kster.

[Entroper]

Do we know yet how in-game map edits work?  I'm referring to the Mist earthquake, Agart, etc.  Things that modify the overworld.

[chillyfeez]

Do we know yet how in-game map edits work?  I'm referring to the Mist earthquake, Agart, etc.  Things that modify the overworld.

Yeah, I researched that a while ago and detailed how to manipulate it here:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1930.msg20787#msg20787

Can't be done with FF4kster ATM, but it can be done.

 
Oh, right, I figured out a faster and easier way after that:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1930.msg20797#msg20797

[Entroper]

Interesting.  So you just set a flag, and then write some code to modify the map in real-time.  I wonder if that's how the game does it, or if it has some other means of storing parts of the map that have been modified.

[chillyfeez]

No. That's how the game does it. What I was explaining in that thread was how to manipulate what the game actually does. As you move around in the world map, the game is constantly reloading data, so that it only has 1/4 of the world map actually loaded into RAM at any given time. As it's loading, there are built in checks for the appropriate flags and checks for the current Y-position, and that's how it determines whether or not to load the alternate map data.

[Entroper]

Okay, that makes sense.  And makes it very hard for any editor to provide this functionality, but that's okay, you can get away with just a few really small edits.

[Entroper]

Well, that's inconvenient.  FF4Ed wants a headered ROM, but FF4kster wants an un-headered ROM.

It seems like most of the patches are made for un-headered ROMs.  Luckily, the source code is available for FF4Ed.  I've managed to get it to build after a few fixes, mostly obsolete C++ stuff.

Looks like the editor uses an API called CFile for I/O.  I think I can derive a class from that which applies an offset to every seek operation.  Hopefully that's good enough to make the editor work.

[chillyfeez]

FF4kster uses both headered and unheadered. Doesn't really matter too much, because a header can be added or removed at whim using SNES Tool.
The big problem you'll run into is that FF4ed uses version 1.0 and FF4kster uses 1.1.
If you can get FF4ed to work with a 1.1 ROM, well, that'd be awesome. Map data's in the same place regardless of version, so there's no reason FF4ed couldn't use 1.1. Of course, its tendency to expand the ROM would also break FF4kster compatability, so there's that to look out for, too.

[Entroper]

FF4kster uses both headered and unheadered. Doesn't really matter too much, because a header can be added or removed at whim using SNES Tool.
The big problem you'll run into is that FF4ed uses version 1.0 and FF4kster uses 1.1.
If you can get FF4ed to work with a 1.1 ROM, well, that'd be awesome. Map data's in the same place regardless of version, so there's no reason FF4ed couldn't use 1.1. Of course, its tendency to expand the ROM would also break FF4kster compatability, so there's that to look out for, too.

Oh, I wonder where I got the idea that it wanted an unheadered ROM from.  Maybe the patcher to install Unprecedented Crisis wanted un-headered.  I knew you could add/remove headers easily, but I didn't want to have to do that every time I switched editors.  But perhaps I'll just header-up my ROM once and see how it goes.

Is there a place where known differences are listed between 1.0 and 1.1?  As long as the data hasn't moved, it should be okay.  I did notice it was looking for "FINAL FANTASY II" instead of "FINAL FANTASY 2" and checking the version number as well.

Anyway, I already finished the offset thing, and it seems to work.  But I haven't tried playing it yet to see if it messed up the non-map data.