My mod, and some feasibility questions...

[Ansehelm]

Hey friends, name's Ansehelm.

I'm working on a modding the game in a way that adds units/graphics and mostly relies on FFTPatcher changes, but I do a little bit of hex editing and will employ some of the things that are possible (and realistically achievable without herculean effort) through ASM hacking...So I have a few questions regarding what is possible and how it can be done.  I've looked over quite a few ASM threads and some tutorials, but there isn't exactly a comprehensive unified list of what has been done so far.

1.  I'm trying to add a poachable monster, without replacing any existing monsters.  Is there a way to do that and assign items?

2.  I'm trying to make more than one monster (but not all of them) mountable.  The hacks I've seen allow either 1 more mountable monster, or all mountable monsters.  Is there some happy medium whereby I could do just 2-3?

3.  I want to have monsters that can equip weapons but still have monster death noises. 

4.  Is it possible to add new battles at new locations on the map, or to add new story battles?

5.  (Related) Is it possible to add more levels to the Deep Dungeon, or to add another unlockable DD style location?

6.  I've seen battles in JoT5 begin with units mounted on chocobos - how do I do this?

7.  Is it possible to add battles on the unused maps in the game, or to import WOTL maps?

8.  I know that effect animations can be modified out of game, but is it possible to switch palettes for an animation (without having to replace it), such that I could have, say, a yellow stasis sword (while keeping the original blue available)?

9. Can a unit be knocked back 3 squares with a single attack?

Thanks in advance

[Emmy]

1.  Not to my knowledge.  It might have been done by someone else, but isn't something that interests me enough to look into.

2.  Could probably be done by expanding the range of mountable classes in the "1 more mountable monster" hack, or by expanding the range of the chocobo check.

3.  Good luck with this.  This is a problem of superfluous checks for gender in code related to equipped items.  For example, code will say "branch if unit is a monster" and have a 2nd check later on "branch if unit is naked" (why is the first check needed if the 2nd exists?)  Anyway I managed to find at least 12 of these and it was still not enough, which means there's more lurking in undocumented code somewhere.

4.  Yes.  As a point of reference, vanilla has 55 scripted story battles, and Monster Tactics has 75 as of the latest update.  They aren't totally new locations (the dot on the map has to exist in vanilla to my knowledge), but usually appear by making for example, Goug 1 and Goug 2 in sequence on 2 different Goug maps.

5.  Your best bet here is to use Xifanie's Propositions hack.  It'll replace Propositions with new battle locations, but you need to learn eventing along with worldmap/attack.out basics to make this work.

6.  Elric can explain this better than I can, but more or less he manipulated randoms so that if specific units are present in a random (a chocobo and a character that can mount it), that they'll walk to a location where the chocobo is before the screen fully loads; so that all you see is the unit riding the chocobo when the screen does load.

7.  Yes/no, depending on the map.  To my knowledge you can't directly import Wotl maps but you can probably make a similar map and upload to a blank/unused slot.  Some maps that were not used in vanilla or used only in events can be used successfully in battle though.

8.  Idk?

9.  No.

[3lric]

4.  Is it possible to add new battles at new locations on the map, or to add new story battles?
You stated you've seen Jot5, so how do you not know the answer to this?

6.  I've seen battles in JoT5 begin with units mounted on chocobos - how do I do this?
Event Editing, Emmy explained it just fine

7.  Is it possible to add battles on the unused maps in the game, or to import WOTL maps?
WotL didn't have any maps that weren't in the original game

8.  I know that effect animations can be modified out of game, but is it possible to switch palettes for an animation (without having to replace it), such that I could have, say, a yellow stasis sword (while keeping the original blue available)?
Xifanie's ISO Manager

[Ansehelm]

Awesome, thanks for the responses.  Looks like I've got a little more research to do.

You stated you've seen Jot5, so how do you not know the answer to this?

Good question. We all know that adding new content and repurposing existing content are very different things.  JoT5 modified the order of existing battles/scenes (so it seems).  My intent is to keep all the existing vanilla battles, while adding extra plot/optional battles.  I did see the "mark" battle with the frogs on the ship, but I don't know that that wasn't a repurposed plot/cutscene/unlockable battle from vanilla.

Yes.  As a point of reference, vanilla has 55 scripted story battles, and Monster Tactics has 75 as of the latest update.  They aren't totally new locations (the dot on the map has to exist in vanilla to my knowledge), but usually appear by making for example, Goug 1 and Goug 2 in sequence on 2 different Goug maps.

Yes, I noticed that most of the cutscenes were made into battles.  Not a bad idea, although I'll use that sparingly, if at all.  My intent is to do as much as I can without eating cutscenes or story battles.

Good luck with this.  This is a problem of superfluous checks for gender in code related to equipped items.  For example, code will say "branch if unit is a monster" and have a 2nd check later on "branch if unit is naked" (why is the first check needed if the 2nd exists?)  Anyway I managed to find at least 12 of these and it was still not enough, which means there's more lurking in undocumented code somewhere.

I'll look into this more.  I found by hex editing that there's a single value that controls whether a unit makes a monster death noise, equips weapons, etc, but there was a good bit of (seemingly) superfluous hex afterwards that I couldn't figure out the purpose of.