øAslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=5f0fck550j2m4m2fpbtkj2vkm1&action=profile;u=278;area=showposts;start=105e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/indexff52-2.htmlslickproductions.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=5f0fck550j2m4m2fpbtkj2vkm1&action=profile;area=showposts;u=278e:/My Web Sites/Slick Productions - FFIV Message Board/slickproductions.org/forum/indexff52-2.html.zx¼åg^ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÈ0P.ÍOKtext/htmlISO-8859-1gzip0|ÖÍÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿTue, 10 Mar 2020 19:25:07 GMT0ó°° ®0®P®€§²ð®»åg^ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ&Í Show Posts - chillyfeez

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Messages - chillyfeez

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106
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Alright, REALLY preliminary, something I've been working on for a couple days.
« on: August 17, 2016, 10:57:37 PM »
I studied them pretty extensively over a fairly protracted period of time a while ago. Don't know if all the details are in one place...
FF4kster, I think, does have all the location tile properties right. If you look at the list there in the Tileset editor, it goes down the line from least to most significant bit.

As for world map tiles...
Well, charwalk2 is plateaus (walkable tiles that have a different "z-axis value" from the rest). That leaves only 0x2000 unknown. Let's see if it's on the forum somewhere...
Nah, doesn't look like it is...
Looking at the rest of the properties, though, I would guess that that bit would indicate Big Whale landing spots. But that's an untested guess.

107
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Alright, REALLY preliminary, something I've been working on for a couple days.
« on: August 17, 2016, 02:28:49 PM »
If I had to guess, I'd say that has to do with indexing efficiency - the X value is already set by the tile selection. So while you could store as many as four palette assignments in one byte, it would take a lot more assembly to extract the relevant information when you needed it.

108
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Alright, REALLY preliminary, something I've been working on for a couple days.
« on: August 16, 2016, 07:12:37 PM »
This is kind of
 :offtopic:
But I gotta say, I love it when this forum creates an avenue for mutual inspiration!
This is when this @#$% gets really fun!

109
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: FF II: A Threat from Within - OPINION(s) NEEDED FOR SOMETHING
« on: August 16, 2016, 07:07:15 PM »
Oh. Um. Well, that would make things pretty convenient. I wouldn't have asked you for something like that, but if you're offering...
I'll have to fix my Overworld triggers, too, because some of them are technically invalid and my unwillingness to spend time fixing them has forced me to continue using an older version of FF4kster up to this point, but really that's just a "me" thing.
Yeah, lemme take a couple of days to figure all this out and I will get back to you with a file size.
 :childish:

110
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Alright, REALLY preliminary, something I've been working on for a couple days.
« on: August 15, 2016, 11:15:49 AM »
Location maps are compressed the same way as the world maps, actually, the only difference between the way the data is arranged between the two is the termination of rows with an FF (I think the world map does it but location maps don't?).
 :edit:
Quote
the snow-capped mountains.
Oh, right, and that. That's another difference.
There's definitely a bit of a lag on my relatively weak computer when I use the location map editor in FF4kster, which might be at least in part due to the on-the-fly recompression, but it's not intrusive enough to complain about.

I just tried it out, by the way. Replaced the desert next to baron castle with a lake. Worked like a charm. This is already more useful than yousei's editor (no offense to The Father of FF4 Hacking).
Nice work!
 :cookie:

 :edit: 2
By the way, how does your editor handle overflow currently? Does it just move into the Underworld's territory? Or does it do something crash-y?

111
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Alright, REALLY preliminary, something I've been working on for a couple days.
« on: August 15, 2016, 10:50:20 AM »
Because of the way map data is stored, I've found that the trick to adding detail in one place is to remove detail in another. There are some little peninsulas that the player would never walk on that can be oceaned over, which could free up a fair amount of space if done right. Likewise with snow-capped mountains, etc. An entire row of ocean can be written with only two bytes; but a row of ocean, then west bank, then piece of land, then east bank, then more ocean takes seven bytes. That kind of thing adds up.
But also, that's why yousei's editor would just automatically expand the ROM. If you're not constantly paying attention to space, you can go over pretty easily.
Pinkpuff put a pretty ingenious device into the location map editor: a "space remaining" window. In my project I've never even come close to filling location map space up (I think I have around 5700 free bytes, it says), but I know others have had problems getting enough map space for their projects. That would certainly be helpful in a world map editor, though, if it were possible.

112
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: FF II: A Threat from Within - OPINION(s) NEEDED FOR SOMETHING
« on: August 15, 2016, 10:39:39 AM »
OK, I thought maybe that's what you were getting at. Yeah, that would work, I guess.

I wouldn't have to recopy the entire ROM, just the data that changes depending on the "disc," which would all be catalogued in the IPS file anyway.
Yeah, I guess that's probably the better way to go.

Too bad, I was starting to hatch ambitious plans to re-draw the graphics in the castle shot from the prologue ("the crystal was shedding its light silently") to be a different picture to show at each disc change. That would have been fun, but you're right - playability probably takes priority here.

113
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Alright, REALLY preliminary, something I've been working on for a couple days.
« on: August 15, 2016, 12:00:54 AM »
Quote from: Entroper on August 14, 2016, 06:47:25 PM
Order of priorities is as follows:

  • Edit the map.
  • Save the map to the ROM file.
  • Edit the tile properties (walkable, etc.)
  • Edit the other world maps (Underworld, Moon)
After those are done, we can start getting fancy.
Quote from: Entroper on August 14, 2016, 10:38:43 PM
Aaaaaaaaaaand holycrapitworks.  :omg:

https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/tag/0.3
All of that works now? Or 1 and 2?
Either way, good stuff. I'm off tomorrow, so I definitely will be messing around with this a bit.
 :cookie:

114
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: FF II: A Threat from Within - OPINION(s) NEEDED FOR SOMETHING
« on: August 14, 2016, 09:01:38 PM »
No, I think you're misunderstanding me. ROM expansion is expressly not an option, because doing so would break FF4kster compatibility.

FF4kster makes so many aspects of editing FF4 so convenient that it's worth going out of my way to figure out ways around ROM expansion.

I was thinking, though, there's no reason to make it necessary to rename things. Patching programs (LIPS, in particular, but I think it's universally true) maintain the original filename, so the player would simply have to apply the next patch when it came time to do so. That sort of answers my flash cart question, too.

115
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: FF II: A Threat from Within - OPINION(s) NEEDED FOR SOMETHING
« on: August 14, 2016, 02:11:49 PM »
Quote from: Bahamut ZERO on August 14, 2016, 01:38:20 PM
I like the sound of a "Multiple Disc" style setup.  It would give you a massive amount of freedom when it comes to dialogues,events, even changing up enemy formations a bit if you want.

Plus as an added bonus, if you go this route it pretty much makes it damn near impossible for someone to make TFW repros later down the line. Win win!

Hmmm... Does anybody here ever use flash carts? Would this prevent flash cart play? I don't care if folks can't make repros, but it would be bad in my mind if this made it impossible to play on original hardware at all.

116
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Alright, REALLY preliminary, something I've been working on for a couple days.
« on: August 14, 2016, 07:57:38 AM »
Oh, cool, Entroper.
I'm not in a position to actually check it out today, but will tomorrow.
I presume this is, to some extent, based in the code from FF4ed?
Any ideas about the functionality it will eventually include? If you're interested in requests on that front:
- some sort of confirmation before automatic ROM expansion (this would be useful for anyone who also uses FF4kster)

... I thought this might be a list, but that's the only thing I can think of now.

117
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: FF II: A Threat from Within - OPINION(s) NEEDED FOR SOMETHING
« on: August 13, 2016, 09:43:59 AM »
So, as I'm working on this project, the notion has been steadily creeping up on me... And I think it's about to hit critical mass: I'm running out of room!

It hit me hard just recently as I used up the last bit of space in dialogue bank 3, which is tiny anyway. But as I transferred some larger messages in bank 3 to bank 1, I started noticing that in bank 1, I'm already up to message 195. Then I looked in the ROM at the amount of space left in Bank 1 - ~800 (h) bytes. And in case you're wondering, the game is, at most, 1/3 complete.

...yeah...

If I polled the folks over at RHDN about the issue, I know exactly what I'd get: expand the ROM. Duh. But you all know as well as I do that doing so would break FF4kster compatibility, which is unacceptable.

So... I think I devised a feasible plan. I'm gonna take a page out of the PS1-era playbook and make the game several "discs." When I wrap up the chapter I'm currently working on, I'll have the last event set a specific flag that indicates "switch to disc 2." (Or Part 2, whatever). Then I'll put a constant check in the program loop for that flag. If it's set, the game will automatically jump to a routine that tells the player "you've completed part 1. Please begin part 2." Obviously Part 2 would have a similar check, which would tell the player "you haven't completed part 1 yet." The messages would instruct the player to read the hack's readme file for instructions on managing the multiple parts (how to rename the save file, where to put the files so that the emulator can find them properly), so that hopefully most lay players would still be able to enjoy the game.

And that would give me the freedom to use as much dialogue as I need to and not really worry about space consequences. Not that this has been an issue yet, but I've been a tad worried about the amount of events I'm using, too, and this would put my mind at ease there as well.

Any thoughts on all this?

118
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: FF II: A Threat from Within - OPINION(s) NEEDED FOR SOMETHING
« on: August 11, 2016, 08:57:56 PM »
Quote from: Bahamut ZERO on August 11, 2016, 06:42:53 PM
Since I don't want to be an ass and throw up a screens of my project in chillyfeez's thread, I'll be, uh, less of an ass and and throw up some pics of it in action in TFW instead.  :wink:
LOL

119
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: Battle commands
« on: August 09, 2016, 04:22:56 PM »
OK... What. The. @#%%.

So "Parry" and "Chang" never get read. The letters that are used are at B7B90 (ROM w/o header). You'll see there "Pary" and "Chnge." Some cockamamie routine is used to double the "r" in Pary, and the "a" from Pary is used for "Change." I can't really do anything about any of that. I might be able to write a new routine, but I'm not sure it would work. I don't know if that crazy routine is used to get other stuff written as well. It probably is. If you can come up with other words to use that follow this format:
L1 L2 L3 L3 L4
and
L5 L6 L2 L7 L8 L9
then you can use those words instead. Like, you can make the commands "Buddy" and "Clutch." That would work fine. But why would you do that? That would be stupid. Anyway, that's all I got on this one.
 :bah:  :wtf:  :lame:

120
Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Re: FF II: A Threat from Within - OPINION(s) NEEDED FOR SOMETHING
« on: August 09, 2016, 04:12:52 PM »
Oh, great. I love the first one.
Thanks!

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