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Print Page - Spell/Item visual effect
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Library of the Ancients => Final Fantasy IV Research & Development => Topic started by: Zozma on March 08, 2011, 07:59:20 PM
Title: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on March 08, 2011, 07:59:20 PM
im trying to find the gfx pointers or what have you, for the items Red Fang, Blue Fang, White Fang because i want to create level four elemental spells using them. Im able to change gfx using that program SMCHACK however, im not sure how to find the right gfx data for that...
anyone messed with this?
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on April 26, 2011, 12:50:26 PM
nevermind, i managed to find that and create "Ice4" with it. Replacing edge's "Pin" skill which uses the same sound that the White Fang and ice3 item/spell made its perfect. (since i didnt see the assigned sound effect anywhere)
now i wonder where the "dark wave" animation is
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: JCE3000GT on April 26, 2011, 03:01:45 PM
That looks pretty good actually. Nice work.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on April 26, 2011, 05:41:00 PM
thanks!
I can't quite understand why they wanted the screen to flash yellow, or why the ice isnt blue tho. perhaps its because this spell overwrote "Pin" ? I don't recall Icebomb flashing yellow
Since summons are broken up into 2 spell slots each (the one in the menu is for the name only i guess?) i found that the ice bomb's visual data was in the "shiva" spot
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on April 26, 2011, 06:45:12 PM
I'm gonna guess it has to do with the spell palette. Pin's palette includes yellow IIRC, so you need to use the same palette that Ice uses.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: JCE3000GT on April 26, 2011, 07:03:00 PM
I'd be interested in a patch that just changes those spells. I would use it in my FF4SS vol 1 mod when I get back on it.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on April 26, 2011, 08:14:32 PM
well its interesting the 3 visual effects can be found in order where Ifrit Shiva and Ramuh are, even tho these effects are NOT used by those summons.
I assume that the effect for "Dark Wave" is somewhere in all this, but i havent had any luck finding it...
tho you can see i decided to go with using the fire effect that comes from ifrit for a more dramatic looking "Fire4" aka "Melt" for my patch.
I do not know how to change the sound so it is convenient that there w as another spell to write over that made the same ice drop sound.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on April 26, 2011, 09:12:48 PM
My only suggestion is that like sounding spells very likely have the same value for the sound effects. If you can figure out what channel that sound effect is coming from, you might get the insight you need.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on April 26, 2011, 09:37:57 PM
the sound data is elsewhere tho as far as i know... i have just been fortunate that most of the stuff i needed matched in sound enough.
the ultimate spell"Nova" sounding like "minimize" is kind of a problem tho lol
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: HHIPDragonFox on May 01, 2011, 04:06:32 PM
I know that 07A550 to 07A64B is the sound Pointers for the spells. I haven't gotten into the Data resources for it yet. Would be interesting on how to edit the sounds directly.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on May 01, 2011, 04:46:59 PM
i just want to make the spell for "piggy" sound just like the enemy skill "demolish"
and then the spell for minimum sound like megaflare
ill do some more playing around. thanks for the sound pointers ill play with that as soon as i get a chance. --- theres another thing too... the first 24 spells use the white magic casting animation and everything after that uses the black magic animation. Is there any way to make some more spells that use the white magic animation further down the line?
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on May 01, 2011, 05:35:26 PM
theres another thing too... the first 24 spells use the white magic casting animation and everything after that uses the black magic animation. Is there any way to make some more spells that use the white magic animation further down the line?
You'd have to find the code which determines said animation. Remember this code is also applicable to summons as well.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on May 01, 2011, 06:42:25 PM
thanks.
right now, as im not sure what exactly im looking for, Ill just stick with having the specific number of white magic spells. I'm glad that at least the black magic can be customized further than a set 24 spells. and summons, i really don't need more of. seems they would be more complex anyway since they use up 2 spell places to begin with.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on May 01, 2011, 06:57:57 PM
It's probably a range check. Here's the basic idea (in C psuedocode)
if spell # < 24 use white magic animation else if spell # between (49 and 63) use summon animation else use black magic animation
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on May 01, 2011, 08:35:48 PM
I assume thats what it is since they seem to do that lot here, (for example, edward can sing with (at least) the next three weapons that appear below the "Charm" harp equipped. actually i turned one of the arrows into a harp and he could sing with that on too... hmm
anyway, question is, would i be able to change this "else show as black magic" to start further down OR display as white magic from this point on relatively easily? actually it seems like its made more complicated because if that is the case then it looks like id actually have to add in an additional range check just for that. its a shame it doesn't just base the animation off of the icon lol...
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on May 01, 2011, 10:42:07 PM
Think of the "black magic" statement is the default result. Everything else has to be checked otherwise.
The only code that I'm aware of that involves the spell icons is Phoenix's spell learning code. I would assume that he may have bound the animation and Will Power stat to White Magic as well, but you'd have to see....
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on May 02, 2011, 03:00:40 PM
I wasn't able to use that nifty patch on my game due to it being a different version of ff4 IIRC, if im able to paste that in thru a hex editor later Id do that (as well as the safe and shell patches)
so anyway, unfortunately i have not been able to test that out...
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Paladin on May 12, 2011, 12:03:44 AM
This is my magic data compilation workbook most of the raw hex data came from the Bab-il docs and from some of you guys...probably JCE and/or Dragonsbrethren.
I defined all of the Sound Effect bytes from 0x00 - 0x7F (I don't think 0x80-0xFF are valid). Please excuse my craptacular descriptions of the noises (I tried to provide examples where possible). However some spell animations have hardcoded sound effects that seem to ignore the SFX byte.
I also got along pretty far in defining the Visual Effects but I kind of got bored with it and never finished it all.
I did manage to make a few new spell effects by playing around with a test ROM but I never did anything with it. I did think about changing the L3 elemental spells to use the appropriate "Fang" elemental item graphics and make them "target all" spells similar to what Zozma is doing; however I wanted to modify the L1 and L2 spells as well but I wasn't sure what (if any) monsters actually cast these spells in battle...so I was still researching it. It is totally do-able and pretty easy. The palette byte is definitely all that needs to change for Zozma's spells to look right.
It can be kind of fun to play with, like you can add a screen shake to spells that didn't have it and so forth. However some spells require both the 0x02 and 0x03 visual effects set properly to work right, for example flare and holy (holy is somehow hardcoded special when you set it's effects), you kind of just have to take a ROM and trash it by playing around with the spells and see what happens.
Anyway, it's not a totally complete document but there it is FWIW.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on May 13, 2011, 04:40:40 PM
thanks a lot paladin! :) I did add a "shake the enemy" effect to the "Flood" spell in my patch too as well as making the palette for the water a bit more vibrant
yeah in the x3 slot for holy, even the sound effect is hardcoded in there, so odd. having the sound info is great because, currently my Demi spell sounds like Piggy lol. and Nova also sounds like mini which is aweful. I managed to make Comet use the "spheres" instead of the stars but what i wanted to do for Nova was use the comet/meteo effect but flash the screen blue instead of red and use the little ice2 sparkle (which would also look good for cure3 if i could figure out how to make that work lol
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on June 20, 2011, 12:22:27 AM
Thanks again Paladin for the info, Ive managed to change the sounds and looks of several spells
Example, here Is the new look of Palom and Porom's "little flare" spell which i now call Nuke
I still cant find out how to change the look of spell casting animation from Black to White or Summon... :( oh well. nobody seems to know
+ a screenshot of the new look for the dark swords (note, this is a separate gfx from the katana) This is the "Deathbringer" sword
+the gravity hammer skill in action hehehe
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: fedorajoe on June 20, 2011, 12:55:45 PM
Wow! Good work, man! I missed this thread earlier. Love the Fire4 (Firaja?), etc. Looks great!
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on June 22, 2011, 02:59:11 PM
Btw, do the menu name display summons actually DO anything? because i want to use their slots for weapon only abilities that dont need name displays.
I plan on making all the spells cast by weapons/items into custom ones Like perhaps "black ice" or "ebon fire" etc etc
This should give even more uniqueness to everything. I just wish i could find the visual data for "Dark Wave"
I dont understand why its nowhere to be found lol... oh well
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on June 22, 2011, 07:02:08 PM
I'm not sure what you're asking.
If you're talking about the item descriptions for summons, I believe that is broken. If someone ever figures a way to fix that, please post a patch for it.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on June 22, 2011, 08:28:26 PM
you know what i just answered my own question about that anyway.
sorry i was unclear but. what i meant was, in the list of spells, there are 2 versions of each summon spell
that is, the ones that appear properly in the menu, (which i think is actually for menu display purpose only) and then the ones that are the actual spells themselves that actually have enemy skill length names.
for example the visual effects for the 3 fang items red/white/blue are found in the fake Ramuh/Ifrit/Shiva slots.
that last line is how i answered my own question. I can create visual effects, for example a purple Fire2 effect "EbonFire" in one of these slots, and then attach it's visual effect to a weapon. and i have a new weapon only bug free spell... sorry i only just got the hang of how that works but i already got it
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on June 22, 2011, 11:20:18 PM
There is some linkage in a sense in how they did all that. I believe they did that to increase the spell power of the summon, but I could be wrong on that.
You can't make monsters use summons, but in its place, you have the spell targeting to all character/enemies... this is how the Dark Elf operates its listed spell attacks.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on June 23, 2011, 02:45:39 AM
dark elf? off subject but.
his tri elemental attack is weird, is he actually casting the real fire/ice/bolt2 spells because it only shows damage once...
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Deathlike2 on June 23, 2011, 09:20:20 AM
The spells are real from the Dark Elf. That is an effect of chained attacks (other than the regular 2 straight attacks). For the "spells" that the Dark Elf casts, subtract 48 from the spell to derive the original spell that is being multitargeted.
Another rare one is the FF4ET version with the Red Dragon. The monster chains Heat Ray with a regular attack.
Title: Re: Spell/Item visual effect
Post by: Zozma on June 23, 2011, 10:32:00 AM