øAslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=5f0fck550j2m4m2fpbtkj2vkm1&action=profile;area=showposts;sa=messages;u=32e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/indexb371.htmldelayedslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=5f0fck550j2m4m2fpbtkj2vkm1&action=profile;u=32e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/indexb371.html.zxvg^ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÈ0°j]ÙOKtext/htmlISO-8859-1gzip@øÕ]ÙÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÑHTue, 10 Mar 2020 11:28:43 GMT0ó°° ®0®P®€§²ð®vg^ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ"0]Ù Show Posts - darkmage

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Messages - darkmage

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1
Game Modification Station / Re: C. V. Bug-Fix Comp and C. V. Script Fix
« on: April 26, 2017, 06:12:31 PM »
Quote from: 13375K31C43R on March 19, 2017, 08:53:13 PM

Sad to say, I just used a hex editor. I'm pretty sure darkmage used either Zone Doctor or FF6LE; the thing is, those programs do an OK job of recompressing, but the algorithm used isn't perfect and certainly doesn't compress as much as possible. I, knowing the compression format, and knowing where the pointers are to the correct tilemap configurations, can generally find the tile(s) I need to change using some searching and mental math. After that, sometimes it's an easy fix of just a byte or two, other times I have to work stuff around, collapse pointers and whatnot to make everything fit.

One thing that happens as a result is that some of the maps suffer from side effects, but I generally try to make them ones that aren't noticeable in-game and don't affect the game at all (i.e. the only way you'd know they're even there is with an emulator with BG layer toggling).
I did indeed use FF6LE to make some of those changes, as my abilities in regard to hex editing are subpar at best. And believe me, I noticed the compression issues after I used it! Lenophis helped me with the actual Phantom Train fix, tho - that was a direct hex edit and I just followed his directions.

Thanks for optimizing that patch! I know everyone who wants to have that fix appreciates it.

2
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: January 13, 2017, 12:37:13 PM »
Quote from: TheNattak on December 07, 2016, 03:33:06 PM
This one is probably the best to go with for now:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=2230.0

It has all the bug fixes and more than this Improvement Project, and none of the 'extras'. Unless it's those extras that you are interested in.

I'll agree with Nattak. CV was apparently able to go where I could not; DO, what I could not. I suggest you go with his patch, as I'm pretty much done with this one. I was frustrated by my lack of ability needed to get this done right. I'm just glad someone was able to make a mega-fix and get it to work!

I've attached an archive with my script translation to a post in his thread - it includes the Opera timing fixes I was working on. Hopefully they'll be useful to him.

If there are any extras in my patch that you wanted to use in yours, let me know and I'll make a patch with the changes I made. Most of my changes can be done in FF6usME, and it sounds like he was able to optimize my Phantom Train fix, but still. I'll help how I can.

EDIT: What the hey. I'll put the archive here, too. I had to expand the ROM in FF6usME to get it to fit, so if there's a better way to insert it that doesn't break everything, knock yourself out.

3
Game Modification Station / Re: C. V. Bug-Fix Comp and C. V. Script Fix
« on: January 13, 2017, 12:32:39 PM »
So, CV Reynolds - I see your Schwartz is better than mine.  :sad:

I was never able to get the whole project working right. And it looks like you have. So, I tip my hat to you sir. I'm fine with you using whatever you need from my Phantom Train fix, so no worries.

Here are the files for my translation, including the Opera timing fixes that I had hashed out. If you, or anyone else, can use them - great! I did have to expand the ROM using FF6usME, for what that's worth.

I'm just glad to see a mega-fix out there in the wild for people to use. Thanks for picking up where I left off and running with it!


4
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: January 29, 2016, 10:08:35 AM »
Quote from: DrROBschiz on October 31, 2015, 08:57:53 AM
Soooooo

Where are we at on this

I still get lots of requests for a definitive version of the original FF6 on SNES

we still have yet to have something like that (even among rereleases from SE themselves)

This project came the closest. Anyone have a working build?
Not yet. I got so frustrated looking into the new bugs introduced by patches that I pushed this project away. Now I want to get this done and out there for you guys to play with. The new Opera scene runs so smoothly, with or without the translation, that it's a crime not to have people seeing it.

But I'm going to need help sorting out where the issues are, still. And it looks like we may have new challengers in the arena!

Quote from: 13375K31C43R on July 18, 2015, 02:05:53 PM
Quote from: assassin on May 26, 2015, 01:47:58 AM
iirc, it's Master ZED's FC 05 fix, and Hollywood Narrator aka C.V. Reynolds came up with a script remedy for it.

Ah, thanks. Now it's working. But I hope the patch didn't ruin any other scripts...

Quote from: TheNattak on November 14, 2012, 02:56:03 AM
Quote from: darkmage on February 27, 2011, 03:33:46 PM
So I found the culprit causing the Row window issue, and it wasn't the patch I expected...the Esper Battle Menu fix is causing this issue on a clean FF3us 1.0 headered ROM.

It's these 3 bytes here that is causing it. 
C2/DE93: 02 04        COP $04
C2/DE95: 00

They are changed to: 8C 03 8F with the patch, for whatever the reason may be. (Leno?)
Changing them back seems to keep the Esper Battle Menu fix intact, and fixes the window, so that's good.
Awesome work, Leet Sketcher! (Hope you don't mind if I don't recreate the 1337 version :) )

I visited your page, and you've made more work for me now - so I hope I can call on you for help.

I know a bit of assembly, but I don't have a "proper" hacking pedigree. The most I've done on my own is graphics and text hacking - I haven't delved into palettes or routines, or come up with engine changes completely on my own. So while I have enough expertise to bring different mod patches together and (mostly) make them work, I couldn't do what Lenophis and Co have done to make Pandora's Box.

In my first post, I have a list of the changes I have made, as well as the list of patches I'm trying to implement. Some of the patches are causing issues that wouldn't happen on their own - but I'm putting so many together, and some are either using the same space as other patches, or are trying to modify routines that have already been modified. I'm not as familiar with the routines as some - so I'm not sure exactly where the conflicts I'm running into are occurring, or why.

To make matters more complicated, my translation takes so much more space than the original script that I have to expand the ROM using FF3usME, which is almost certainly breaking some dialogue-related patches since all the pointers change.

I plan to make a diff list based on the current one floating out there that will also have the exact changes being made by each patch. That way there's a clearer view of what's being done, where. Once I have that done, I would need someone to vet the changes and see what should be happening as opposed to what is happening. If I can get that, and make the appropriate changes to resolve conflicts, then I can release this project and hopefully it will be stable enough for people to use as a base for their projects.

tl;dr - It isn't dead, but it's been on life support. Hopefully with some professional help, we can get it back on its feet!

5
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 21, 2015, 12:44:57 PM »
No to both. I've taken off all the new patches I put on, and am applying them one at a time to see which one is the problem.

6
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 19, 2015, 10:11:47 PM »
Hmm...

EDIT: At first I thought there was an issue with assassin's "Some MP changes don't update menus fix" version 0.20 patch, since randomly I'm seeing a "Need MP" message when I try to cast a spell. I applied the anti-patch and for a while in my subsequent playthrough I didn't see an issue, so I figured that was the problem.

But now I'm seeing an issue in the Locke scenario where I hit the spring in the cave to fill up Celes's MP, cast a MT Ice spell (5 MP cost), and her MP drops from 116 to 11. If I cast Imp (10 MP), it drops from 116 to 14. But it only seems to happen after I use the spring...if I sleep in Sabin's cabin, I still occasionally get the "Need MP" message, but the MP total doesn't go crazy when a spell is cast.

7
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 19, 2015, 08:16:29 PM »
Quote from: TheNattak on March 18, 2015, 02:48:11 PM
Well if it makes you feel any better Darkmage I used the patch as a base for my hack like 3 or 4 years ago, whatever version it was back then, and it's been great! Seemed done to me enough anyways to use.

I'm glad you were able to use it, man...that makes it worthwhile right there.

One of the last things I really wanted to do was get the Opera timing fixed, and that is done for the translation - but I still want to fix it for the original, because it really is poor opcoding. Once I get that taken care of, and these last patches in place, my hope is that people will consider it to be the version that we should have gotten straight from S-E from the beginning.

8
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 19, 2015, 07:37:49 PM »
Not counting the changes made manually (or the bothersome patches), there are currently 103 patches included in the test ROMs. Once I figure out where I can manually put the fixes for these other five, there will be 108. If I counted the patches that fix issues I've already taken care of manually, there would be ~115 patches in total.

Because I'm still testing the rest of the patches to make sure they're not causing any issues, there isn't currently a version that I'm happy to let out into the wild. Believe me, once that changes you will probably be able to hear the "FINALLY!" from wherever you are!  :happy:

9
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 18, 2015, 11:22:49 AM »
Yeah, I'm not too happy that this is not done six years later.  :isuck: But I'm determined to get it done so that people can get going on their own projects. And it isn't something I had thought of, but the translation patch expanding the ROM means that people can do more detailed storylines in their own projects, which is an awesome thought!

10
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 12, 2015, 05:59:41 PM »
Starting from scratch. :omg:

I had been so stuck on getting those bothersome patches to work properly, that I never went through and properly validated all the other patches that need validatin'. So now that I'm back on this, I'm gonna do it right.

I've taken one of my backup ROM copies and applied all of the patches I want in the improvement, except for the ones that seem to be causing the majority of the problems:

Quote
Duncan Stays Put
Edgar Revealed
King of Vanity / Blush Disease Fix
They Only Jump Left in Zozo!
Zoneseek? No Thanks/Free Space for Events

On top of this, I took vivify93's advice from waaaay back and just rewrote the line that necessitates a fix if you find Shadow on the Veldt. So the "Shadow is NOT a Girl!" patch is no longer necessary.

I also saw that a few patches had been released and/or updated - plus I hadn't mentioned the patches I was planning on adding since v1.07 - so I'm also trying the following:

Quote
Agoraphobic Leader 1.0 (Novalia Spirit; site is down, Wayback shows 1.01 was released...?)
Anchors Aweigh! 1.2 (Lenophis)
Border Crossing 1.0a (Lenophis)
Bottomless HP and MP Well fix 0.22 (assassin)
Equip Wrong Item to Slot via Event fix 0.20 (assassin)
Fanaticism 1.1 [unlimited; modified to work with Brushless Sketch] (Ronnen)
Fancy Walking 1.0 (Lenophis)
Flaky True Knight Protection fix 0.20 (assassin)
Ignore Defense No Longer Ignoring Safe or Shell 1.E (assassin)
Miscolored Command Names fix [white text] 0.20 (assassin)
Premature Continuation fix 0.20 (assassin)
Randomosity Monster Encounter fix 0.20 (assassin)
Reflect Barrier Shown on Bodyguards fix 0.20 (assassin)
Remote Control fix 1.0 (Novalia Spirit)
Running Popsicle/Lead-Footed Esper fix 0.30 (assassin)
Sleazy Lender fix 1.0 (Novalia Spirit)
Slightly Lagged Battle Event Timer Display fix 0.25 (assassin)
Some MP Changes Don't Update Menus fix 0.20 (assassin)a
SwdTech Ready Stance 1.1 [alternate; preserves Retort behavior] (HatZen08)
The Persistent Whistle fix 1.0 (Novalia Spirit)
The Phantom Diary fix 1.0 (Novalia Spirit)
Unaffected Rows fix 0.20 (assassin)
Unhardcoded Tintinabar [party] 1.0a (Lenophis)

With the inclusion of HatZen's patch, I have removed ArmorVil's SwdTech Speed-Up patch, since if it works out the Ready Stance patch will improve Cyan's usability quite a bit.

Finally, the following changes were manually implemented:

Quote
  • Changed actor names from all-caps (this one is old, but Imzogelmo's "Name Lowercasing" patch is still in the OP list so I'm adding it here)
  • Changed the enemy formation index for "The Peninsula of Death" (thanks, Novalia Spirit!)
  • Removed the Reflectable flag for the Magitek Fire Beam, Ice Beam and Bolt Beam (thanks, assassin!)
  • Corrected the attack script for Vargas after the FC05 enemy command fix is applied, so the Blitz tutorial works (thanks, CV Reynolds!)

I'm going to expand the ROM without the troublesome patches, so I can confirm that the translation works all the way through. Once that is done, I'm going to take a look at what each of those five patches does code-wise, one at a time, then try to implement the fixes from them in such a way that they won't cause issues in either version. If I can do this, then there won't be a need for the "complete" patch - since FF3usME 6.7 doesn't mess up unmodded ROMs by writing to their space, the "base" patch should be safe to use afterward!

Wish me luck!

11
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 12, 2015, 11:23:38 AM »
I had checked the Wayback Machine for Fridgia Nova, but not all of the files were in the archives so I thought the same might be true of mblock's page as well. Guess I should have checked. Thanks, assassin!

EDIT: Also, someone on RHDN put some of Novalia Spirit's patches on Dropbox, so I was able to pull some of the ones I needed.

12
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 11, 2015, 06:33:17 PM »
Well, this isn't good.

To try and simplify the process of applying the patches, I had unzipped the .ips files and put them in a subfolder of the Improvement project. But...for reasons I don't remember at all, I didn't keep the zip files the patches came in...  :isuck:

Which is bad, because both Novalia Spirit's and mblock's pages are down, so I don't have access to any changes they documented. Does anyone have the most recent patches they had on their sites?

13
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 09, 2015, 12:20:22 PM »
It's good to be back. Trust me, this is doubly frustrating to me because I want to be able to play through the translated version myself!

I've gone through the translation script since it's been a while, and made sure it's how I want it to be. For the people who mentioned Cyan's odd way of talking, I've taken words and sentence structure from older forms of English, so if you're not familiar with it some words will seem odd or not words at all. The "an" that someone brought up a while back - an is Shakespeare for if. The fan-translations I've read all point to Cyan having an old and ultra-formal style of speech associated with the samurai, and this is the only way I could think to somewhat represent that - having him be a knight from the Middle Ages, and talking as such.

The opera scene is done, all battle dialogue and status messages are done, so the only thing left is fixing the patches that point to the original dialogue pointer addresses, and it should be good.

I'm going through all the patches and identifying the ones that reference dialogue now, and for the ones that don't come with the actual hex changes (thanks all modders who have included that in the zips!), I'm doing diffs, or side-by-side compares, to figure out what the patches are doing.

I'm removing the Shadow on the Veldt patch from the list, since I fixed that with a line change that will work regardless of whether Relm or Shadow are found in the cave. This will be the case for all versions of the patch.

Once I've got a good idea of the patches that are causing problems, I'll hopefully also have a good idea of how to fix them.

14
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 05, 2015, 01:53:25 PM »
Quote from: DrROBschiz on January 09, 2015, 01:46:53 PM
Time to get this thing back to LIFE

Where ya at Dark Mage? I have a lot of people rediscovering FF6 lately and this is one of the few patches that maintains Vanilla setups

Oh And I have a copy of "General Publics" unofficial update from page 40. I am wondering if I should reupload since its the only version that allows a completeably game if I remember right

Here I am!

I'm so sorry for leaving this undone for all this time. Being unable to include several patches for the definitive version of the translation that I feel are necessary had frustrated me so much that I just stopped thinking about this project and tried to find other things that I could be more productive on - with varying degrees of success. I have learned quite a bit about reading hex, so hopefully it will help in figuring out what is going on.

I want this finished and out there for everyone to enjoy, so I'm back on the case and looking at everything with a fresh eye. First thing on the agenda is to get a fixed version of 1.07 uploaded to my site. Rob, if you could post a link to it I will get it bundled up all proper-like.

Hang on, everyone - we're not done yet!

15
Game Modification Station / Re: FF6 Improvement Project
« on: March 13, 2014, 09:29:49 AM »
Quote from: Lenophis on March 07, 2014, 09:22:44 AM
Having had to deal with dialogue issues, I took a rather drastic approach and converted the dialogue to 24-bit pointers for Pandora's Box. That had the very unfortunate side-effect of breaking FF3usME. We had to put a lot of work in so we could use Atlas. Was well worth it, since it gave us unlimited space and dialogue entries to use.

Quote from: darkmage on March 05, 2014, 07:04:27 PM
Unfortunately, I have never researched pointers for FF6, and I have not had a chance to study them and build a reference table to change all the rest of the changed pointers to the new dialogue locations. This is why the King of Vanity scene hangs, right when it's about to start a new line of dialogue.
I don't recall the workings of this patch, does it add a new line of dialogue?

No - it's been a while since I looked at the source, but if I remember correctly it jumps the code that causes Celes and Sabin to blush at the same time and includes a direct line to a dialogue pointer address.

To answer the question by yeoldeusername, patching to the base and complete versions and then expanding the ROM to accommodate the translation - that's what I've been doing. I cannot fit the translated script in the original space provided, and FF3usME points the original dialogue pointers to the new space, but any patches that include direct links to dialogue pointers break as a result. The King of Vanity patch is the earliest point in the game where this occurs - I can go through the source code provided with patches to see if there are any others (the Shadow in the Veldt patch comes to mind), but some of the patches don't have source code provided in the readme or documentation with the patch.

The hex editor I use, Windhex, can do a diff between a clean ROM and an edited one (I think, anyway), so if it's possible I can do a diff for all the patches that might affect dialogue and see what's happening - but without new memory addresses to point to, I'm not sure how I could fix this.


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