Topic: Developing FF4kster: a comprehensive editor for FF4

[Pinkpuff]

I'm most interested in seeing the monster editors, myself. Those are something nothing does well at the moment. Copying and pasting maps from FF4 Tools can be a bit annoying, but I've got a decent setup for that now. No such luck for monsters, where I'm still doing everything in a hex editor.

Glad to hear it, as the map editor I spoke/speculated about will be a long time coming.

Also I too am looking forward to getting to work on the monster editing, but I still think I'm going to make the map properties editor first just to keep everything thematic and organized. So far, even though it may not be explicitly recognized, you may notice there are a couple of loose "groups" of editors within FF4kster:

"Magic" Group

• Spells
• Spell sets

"Inventory" Group

• Weapons
• Armors
• Medicines
• Tools
• Shops

"Character" Group

• Jobs
• Characters
• Commands
• Actors

"Story" Group

• Messages
• Events
• Triggers
• NPCs
• Map properties
• Maps (hopefully)

"Battle" Group

• Monster stats
• Monster AIs
• Battle formations (hopefully)
• Battle events (hopefully)

Ideally I'd like to complete each group before moving to the next but given the amount of investment the map editor will take I'm certainly willing to jump ahead and insert that later. Map properties should be very straightforward though; at a quick glance they all just seem to be either numbers or references to things that already exist.

Overworld stuff would be cool, too.

If you mean the overworld triggers, that's definitely in the works and I will probably also do that before tackling monsters (in fact I may even do it next, before the map properties). If you mean editing the overworld map, I would love to be able to include that with the map editor when that happens, though there seems to be a lack of sources of information on the overworld map... I haven't seen any docs, and FF4Tools doesn't seem to allow editing it so I can't just reverse engineer it from the output like I hopefully can with regular "inner" maps...

[Dragonsbrethren]

Yousei's old editor supports editing the world maps and its source is included:

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/191/

[Grimoire LD]

Ah, here's a suggestion of a feature that I thought was implemented along time ago. Can you allow us to edit the names of the characters?

[Pinkpuff]

Yousei's old editor supports editing the world maps and its source is included:

So it does! Thanks! I'm not too familiar with C++ but I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out by the time I'm ready to work on that.

Ah, here's a suggestion of a feature that I thought was implemented along time ago. Can you allow us to edit the names of the characters?

You know what, I thought it was too! Hmm well that fix should be pretty trivial. I'll upload an update shortly.

  Ok, now you should be able to rename the actors.

[Grimoire LD]

Looks like it works, thanks for the fix there.

Also I was curious to know if you planned on allowing us to edit the indexes, like the Status Indexes, Equip indexes, as well as allowing the break-bytes on normal weapons (since they do function appropriately) also do my recent findings have any place in the editor, or would it be best for those to remain separate?

  Oh very nice subtle update on having Equip Index 0 (which is really just 31) be an "Equip All" byte.

[Pinkpuff]

Looks like it works, thanks for the fix there.

No sweat; thanks for pointing it out!

Also I was curious to know if you planned on allowing us to edit the indexes, like the Status Indexes, Equip indexes,

You can... at least... you should be able to... I'll verify in a sec (and fix it if it's not working) but you should be able to hit tab while selecting an index to edit that index.
  Turns out there was a slight problem with the way it was encoding the flags, it should work now.

as well as allowing the break-bytes on normal weapons (since they do function appropriately) also do my recent findings have any place in the editor, or would it be best for those to remain separate?

You mean the properties like "stackable", "multiples in chests", "consumable", etc? Yeah I'd like to include those. Since you seem to be still actively researching it I'll probably remain focused on other things for now but at some point I will definitely go back and put flags for those into the weapon editor. Also, while those are most of the properties required to make something into an "arrow", there are still a couple missing: "can equip either hand" and "deals more damage in one hand than the other" (though that might just be a bow thing? still would be good to know)

I'm really interested in the research on two-handedness though, that would be the real holy grail for weapon properties! If it turns out that we can only change the range in terms of where it starts and can't actually change the total number of two-handed weapons then that would be kinda disappointing, but if we can change the range to include more weapons (or less) then that would be fantastic! And if it turns out to be settable by individual weapon, even better!

Oh very nice subtle update on having Equip Index 0 (which is really just 31) be an "Equip All" byte.

Yeah I actually thought I fixed that a while ago as well. Major deja-vu. You know what, the more I think about it, the more I think that after I took a bit of a break there for a while and came back to it, I might have mistakenly come back to work on a version of the file that wasn't actually the most up-to-date current one... oh well too late now,  I'll just have to re-squash the old bugs as they show themselves.

[Grimoire LD]

Ah, it adds so much more variety when the modder is allowed to put their own indexes in (and not to mention allows usage of a whole bunch of blank indexes.)  It is really great to finally have that, now it feels like work can begin in earnest (with frequent backups, of course).

You mean the properties like "stackable", "multiples in chests", "consumable", etc? Yeah I'd like to include those. Since you seem to be still actively researching it I'll probably remain focused on other things for now but at some point I will definitely go back and put flags for those into the weapon editor. Also, while those are most of the properties required to make something into an "arrow", there are still a couple missing: "can equip either hand" and "deals more damage in one hand than the other" (though that might just be a bow thing? still would be good to know)

I'm really interested in the research on two-handedness though, that would be the real holy grail for weapon properties! If it turns out that we can only change the range in terms of where it starts and can't actually change the total number of two-handed weapons then that would be kinda disappointing, but if we can change the range to include more weapons (or less) then that would be fantastic! And if it turns out to be settable by individual weapon, even better!

Yes, that's partially what I meant, but I also meant the Stat Boosting Items to change whatever you wish (Like say you want the Golden Apple to increase Strength by 3 rather than increase HP by 100, or want the Soma Drop to boost Permanent Magic Evasion, or some such) and the slight bit of work I've done with Commands (really the only stable thing in there is the Steal Slot 1-4 on an enemy and Dragonsbrethren figuring out how to make Cecil take no damage from Dark Wave) I would be wary of using any of my Bluff notes at the current time.

[Deathlike2]

It is not possible to boost magic evasion permanently... because there are formulas at work that recalculate themselves when you show up to the equip screen (think like FF1's Monk Bug).

[Grimoire LD]

It is not possible to boost magic evasion permanently... because there are formulas at work that recalculate themselves when you show up to the equip screen (think like FF1's Monk Bug).

Bad example on my part, yes. It's possible to increase the five basic stats and change your identity/class, but not evasions and the like.

[Pinkpuff]

Ah, it adds so much more variety when the modder is allowed to put their own indexes in (and not to mention allows usage of a whole bunch of blank indexes.)  It is really great to finally have that, now it feels like work can begin in earnest (with frequent backups, of course).

Yup, just a few more editors to go and a bunch of cosmetic/convenience tweaks.

Yes, that's partially what I meant, but I also meant the Stat Boosting Items to change whatever you wish (Like say you want the Golden Apple to increase Strength by 3 rather than increase HP by 100, or want the Soma Drop to boost Permanent Magic Evasion, or some such) and the slight bit of work I've done with Commands (really the only stable thing in there is the Steal Slot 1-4 on an enemy and Dragonsbrethren figuring out how to make Cecil take no damage from Dark Wave) I would be wary of using any of my Bluff notes at the current time.

Yup, all that will be coming! Not sure how long it will take but it is on my to-do list.

[vivify93]

Hello! :) I'm greatly appreciating the dialogue editor, but I have a tale to tell.

So I edited some dialogue in ff4kster and then went around to do finishing touches on the battle dialogue in a hex editor. I had to go back to ff4kster to fix some things, but it now refuses to load the ROM and instead crashes if I try. It can load a clean ROM just fine.

Obviously, this is an awful inconvenience seeing as how I use both programs!

I have two suggestions: add some way to use "special characters" and other things that can only be done in hex editors at the moment, such as the ellipsis tile, item icons, and character name variables, or perhaps you could look into the cause of this?

Thank you so much, everyone involved with this, and have a wonderful day!

[Grimoire LD]

Hmm, I'm not sure about the ellipsis tile, but if you press insert after erasing the original item icon in Items you can scroll (by using up and down) through the item icons.

As for name variables, all of the text messages have a /name00 - name13. In addition, if you hit Insert you can reach these menus in an easier fashion, with music cues, pauses and item icons included.

Did you keep a copy of your ROM by chance? When working with a Hex Editor it is nearly prudent to create backups. If you did not, send it to me and I'll see if I can't find the problem.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Underscore enters an ellipsis. Being able to insert any font character anywhere would be nice, though.

[vivify93]

Hmm, I'm not sure about the ellipsis tile, but if you press insert after erasing the original item icon in Items you can scroll (by using up and down) through the item icons.

As for name variables, all of the text messages have a /name00 - name13. In addition, if you hit Insert you can reach these menus in an easier fashion, with music cues, pauses and item icons included.

Did you keep a copy of your ROM by chance? When working with a Hex Editor it is nearly prudent to create backups. If you did not, send it to me and I'll see if I can't find the problem.

I had no idea about Insert! That is pretty awesome. I didn't keep a backup, mainly because of how willing I am to start over if need be, but I'll send it over your way.

I sent it!

[Pinkpuff]

Underscore enters an ellipsis. Being able to insert any font character anywhere would be nice, though.

You can.

I have two suggestions: add some way to use "special characters" and other things that can only be done in hex editors at the moment, such as the ellipsis tile, item icons, and character name variables

This is where reading the instructions comes in handy...

or perhaps you could look into the cause of this?

Without knowing exactly what you did in the hex editor this is impossible... Who knows, the wrong typo could mess it up something fierce. But as long as only using FF4kster doesn't cause a problem, then I can't concern myself with protecting the user from any arbitrary changes they may make in a hex editor from crashing the editor.

In the meantime if someone is able to produce this kind of error using FF4kster alone (short of adding large amounts of additional text, as that is already a known issue) then I would be happy to look into it.

Thank you so much, everyone involved with this, and have a wonderful day!

And you as well! Glad to hear it's being useful to people