Topic: Item descriptions

[chillyfeez]

There's actually plenty of map space - for locations, anyway - as long as you build intelligently. One great thing FF4kster does is automatically consolidate data banks like maps after you make edits. It even tells you how many free bytes of map space you have left.

The only aspects I've found that would benefit from expansion would be text and monster graphics really (as in, adding new images to the existing list). I mean, expansion might come in handy for other things, too (like, say, having more than 255 events), but doing so would require ROM expansion in addition to significant assembly manipulation.

[Rodimus Primal]

Hopefully you can get it working. Awesome work as always, chillyfeez.

[chillyfeez]

As a matter of fact, I had an epiphany about it that made things far less complicated.
So here it is!

To use:
1) apply the patch to unheadered ROM (this is intended to work with Namingway Edition, but should be OK with vanilla FFIV, too. For other projects, check with me first so I can advise about where you should have free space before using this patch)
2) don't ever use the item description editor in FF4kster ever ever again (I can't promise you that doing so won't mess the whole thing up - it will be fine still if you make other changes to the ROM with FF4kster)
3) your item description bank will now be located at 6E818 in ROM (DE818 in LoROM). The first two bytes there should be FF 00. Leave those two bytes alone. Everything else after that (I put in some numbers just as an example) can be overwritten.
4) Each item description can have up to Three lines, with 19 characters (including spaces) per line. Squish tiles and symbols are all OK to use. DTE will not work. Use 01 for a line break. Put 00 at the end of each description.

And there you have it!

[Rodimus Primal]

Excellent. So don't use the message editor section for Items. But what about setting the items to their proper messages so that everything lines up properly? In FF4kster, you can tell the items what message to use if you have it set up properly. I know you asked me to do so for it to work with Namingway Edition, but if you're giving this IPS out I'm just making sure.

[chillyfeez]

Right. Yeah. Good call.

If applying this patch to any ROM that isn't Namingway Edition...
Before applying the patch, open your ROM in FF4kster and change all of the item descriptions to "1, 2, 3...60" (there are 60 altogether).
Then, assign them all to the items in order, beginning with the bomb fragment (item B0) (weapons and armor can't have descriptions).
After saving those changes, then apply the patch. Then never use the item description editor in FF4kster ever ever again.