Lately I've been doing work on FF 1&2: Dawn of Souls (mainly on the FF1 side), inspired by Jeff Ludwig's Mod of Balance and hacking notes. I'm in the process of transferring my own rough notes to RHDN's Data Crystal, but there's still a lot left to do, especially for data structures and offsets. One thing I discovered today is that FF1 and FF2 data is not as strictly divided as I thought - after FF1's spell usability table comes text data shared by both games, then various text for FF2, and then the text indices for FF2's overworld that dictate what area name to use for each 4x4 quadrant.
In addition to documenting Dawn of Souls, I've made a few patches for FF1:
Vancian MP System
This patch replaces the MP system with a Vancian spell charge scheme like that used by the NES and PSX versions. Simple idea, but a
lot of routines and data structures had to be modified to make this work. If you're looking for an alternate way to handle spellcasting in FF1, this mod gives a good start, though it deliberately avoids any rebalancing changes.
Monster AI EnhancementThis patch allows monsters to skip over spells and abilities, which can allow for some extra unpredictability. It comes in two variants - one only lets one spell/ability be skipped per turn, while the other allows for a monster to skip over multiple at once, though the chances of consecutive skips fall in half each time. In addition to the above this patch also expands the maximum ability list size to six from four. I figured if I was going to expand and relocate the AI table I might as well.
Equipment Viewing Screen Improvement
This patch lets you examine any piece of equipment in the field to see its attributes, elemental properties and what spell it casts if any. Beats looking at a FAQ, I'd say.
Unrunnable Battle Notification
This patch displays a message whenever you enter a battle flagged as inescapable. This way you can be certain from the get-go of whether you should bother trying to run from an encounter.
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