Topic: FFV Viewer

[LightPhoenix]

LightPhoenix, do you have any info on how battle backgrounds were rendered, what structures they use?

Sorry, never looked much into that.

[Squall]

... and I also notice that the palette pointers might have a header or something?

No there is no header for palette. The palette part is exactly 32 bytes, which is the exactly how 16 color palette need.

Sorry, never looked much into that.

Too bad, you usually have deep knowledge on a subject and that would have been tremendous help :(

  I was able to display Goblin correctly from GBA ROM!!! 
But I used constant addresses, now only the master table is left, so I can take the the addresses dynamically.

[Squall]

Finally I was able to crack Battle Backgrounds for GBA 

x0_000 since GBA screen is 240 wide, but backgrounds are 256, do you know why there are extra 16 pixels (2 tiles/row)?

[x0_000]

256 is a power of 2, 240 isn't. It makes it easier for the hardware to reference specific tiles in memory.

[Squall]

Interesting. So the player will never see this 16 pixels strip ...

Well I hopped it will be used for scroll effects. PC version always do some sort of parallax scroll when battle starts. It uses 3 layers for that effect, two of which glued together are as GBA version, but 3rd is unique to PC. Also in some battles you may see horizontal scroll of clouds or something.

BTW GBA graphics is much easier to me, maybe because it uses data structures close to what you normally do on PC :D

x0_000 in background graphic Map/Pattern/Form part has 12 bytes of header.  First 8 are standard, but do you know what last 4 are for?

[Squall]

Version 7.0 is out!!!

It became tradition each Friday a new version to come out :D

Although this is a major version, all changes are GBA only:
- New Background tab - now you can see battle backgrounds, even animate some of them :)
- New LZ77  (aka LZ10) decompression, heavily used by GBA games
- Updated monster graphics with GBA
- Updated encounters for GBA. Event and Dungeon ones are still missing.

Short term plans:
- I will add SNES battle backgrounds if somebody help me / teach me how render it. SNES ones are quite ugly so that will be my lowest priority task
- Battle preview with background of our choice (need to decide on the layout)
- Two new docs/tutorials for Wiki - Rendering GBA monster graphic and battle background

[Jorgur]

So far what I see still missing is:
- Character data
- Equipment types/elemental properties/status properties
- SNES backgrounds (I hope you will do this at some point)
I also feel the encounter viewer needs a bit of work. I would like to see monster graphics (and if possible backgrounds) displayed as in the ROM.

Great work as usual, keep it up!

[Squall]

Great work as usual, keep it up!

Thank you very much for the kind words!

So far what I see still missing is:
- Character data
- Equipment types/elemental properties/status properties

I was thinking about Character as a next big step.
Since 'Equipment types/elemental properties/status properties' are already shown when needed I suspect you are talking about the underlying tables, since these are just indexes in tables. I would love to add it, because I feel its quite neglected in all Editors that I have seen. The thing is they are very short with short info ... so not worth dedicating a whole tab. I was thinking maybe to do as you Jorgur with 'Common Lists' - to combine many different ones in one dedicated tab. What do you think?

I also feel the encounter viewer needs a bit of work

I volunteer to do the work, just tell me in details what you have in mind :D

[x0_000]

x0_000 in background graphic Map/Pattern/Form part has 12 bytes of header.  First 8 are standard, but do you know what last 4 are for?

I don't know what you're talking about, is this a header in the graphics data itself or a table header?

[Jorgur]

I was thinking maybe to do as you Jorgur with 'Common Lists' - to combine many different ones in one dedicated tab. What do you think?

Yes, I do mean the tables. I would put them under "Items" since they are all related to items.

I also feel the encounter viewer needs a bit of work

I volunteer to do the work, just tell me in details what you have in mind :D

Not much, really. The background is still white but I'm sure you are working on that. The monster graphics are not extracted from ROM which means if a ROM uses custom monsters they will display incorrectly in the encounter viewer.

[Squall]

x0_000 in background graphic Map/Pattern/Form part has 12 bytes of header.  First 8 are standard, but do you know what last 4 are for?

I don't know what you're talking about, is this a header in the graphics data itself or a table header?

The Master Table for Battle Backgrounds contain 3 pointers - Tiles, Palettes & Tile Map (others may call it form, pattern...)
The TileMap points to a 12 bytes of header followed by the map itself ... First four is a number (constant), second is the number of Map entries.

So my  questions is - do you know what is the meaning of the last 4 bytes. Just open my Viewer they are under 'Extra'

[x0_000]

Oh, I have no clue.

[Squall]

FINAL FANTASY V - VIEWER

This viewer can reveal most of the secrets Final Fantasy V holds. It is applicable to following:

• GBA - tested with '2564 - Final Fantasy V Advance (U)(Independent)'
• SNES - pretty much all ROMs, but for proper text displaying use RPGe based ones

The Viewer has so many options that will take forever to describe here. Let me just mention some of the neat features, that at least I have never seen in any other utilities for FFV:

• Full monster info, including the graphics (from the ROM and PC version)
• Detailed and structured monster's AI script. Now it handle 99% of commands
• Every possible monster formation (aka Battle), including Over-world (with the help of a map), Dungeons, Events, Monster-in-abox
• Full and accurate information on all Weapons, Armors and Items with ability to filter or search
• Extra features that can be used for finding/hacking info - Text conversation(SNES/GBA), Compression routines (LZSS, LZ77),...
• Full list with all the info on all Actions - including Magics, Commands,...
• Backgrounds, including some options to animate them (Neo Exdeath)

Screenshots: 01  02  03   04

[Squall]

Hey guys, I decided to post the Viewer in RHND. Previous post is how its going to be described. What do you think?

[Squall]

OK, RHND post is up (after waiting couple of days ... so boring): http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1230/

I will appreciate your efforts if you take some time and write a review there