Continued Sprite Problems in WotL, Crossroads? (Resolved)

[OveliaAtkascha]

Hey guys, I've come to a crossroads with a singular aspect of my project and I'm curious what would be the cleanest, most thorough fix to the issue while still remaining possible.

Basically all I'm trying to do is get to where I can use Alma's and Ovelia's sprites (I don't particularly care about their base jobs) without having the following issues:

• The sprites cannot change between jobs, I want them to remain like unique character sprites.


• The sprites cannot be removed at key points in the game's script, leaving the actual Alma and Ovelia behind as permanent guests.


• I do not want sprites that are consistently swapping to random sprites between screens, such as appearing like Ramza in the battle formation screen.

One option I've boiled this down to is having Ovelia and Alma's sprites pasted over the top of rare characters like Celia/Lettie or Valmafra.  Ones that won't ruin the entire game - at least in my opinion - to have them showing up as Ovelia and Alma instead.

The other option, which is more complicated for me, is to get an ASM hack where the game does NOT try to remove Ovelia and Alma from your party in Chapter 2, Lionel Castle, and Chapter 3, Monastery respectively.

Either option comes up with its own unique problems, without taking the long-term approach to completely hack the game, but I feel that the issue of either Ovelia and Alma showing up on top of Riovantes, or having two copies of the respective characters in my party, is something I can ignore for the moment.

Ultimately, I'm just trying to get an assessment on how simple it will be to get the ASM hack done versus the potential issues of copy/pasting sprites over other characters.  Any insight into the best and cleanest method and tips towards getting it done would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

[Xifanie]

That wouldn't require an ASM hack... it would require event editing: http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Event_Instruction_7A

The sprites cannot change between jobs, I want them to remain like unique character sprites.

I can't even begin to understand how you could achieve that.

[OveliaAtkascha]

Ah.. while I remember certain aspects of assembly and hex, I have a feeling this is going to be quite a bit more complicated than I was hoping!  I'll take a look through the tutorials here and see if I can't figure it out over the next little while.  May have to postpone any other 'projects' until I can.

Thanks for your help, Xifanie!

[Edit] --
Actually, while I'm thinking about it, I just read through a part of the event editing tutorial and just wanted to ask a logistics question.  If I find the specific line where the events remove Ovelia and Alma, is it just as simple as removing those lines, or will I need to be a bit more careful?

[3lric]

I do not want sprites that are consistently swapping to random sprites between screens, such as appearing like Ramza in the battle formation screen.

What? I don't even understand this one...

Actually, while I'm thinking about it, I just read through a part of the event editing tutorial and just wanted to ask a logistics question.  If I find the specific line where the events remove Ovelia and Alma, is it just as simple as removing those lines, or will I need to be a bit more careful?

You need to remove the dismissjob command, but you'd also need to set them up to join after event, wherever you chose to do so. In a battle, it's as easy as choosing join after event in the ENTD, otherwise in a non-battle event, you'd need to add some commands to the end of the event, as I mentioned Here.

The main issue is going to be continuity. Unless you intend to heavily edit the scenes where these characters leave as guests from your party, it's gonna be kinda weird. Since Ovelia is with Delita for about 50% of the story, and Ramza is trying to get Alma back for the latter part of the game. Having both with you will be a bit off... Normally I wouldnt mention this, but you've already mentioned a few things you wanted to not happen that would make it look derpy, so I'm assuming you are trying to do this in a professional manner, which I personally cannot see happening unless you intend to remake ~50% of the story, up to and including the final boss of the game.

[OveliaAtkascha]

What? I don't even understand this one...

The best example I can give you here is just using FFTPatcher to drop Celia or Lettie into your party on ENTD event 188.  In the party screen and in every battle formation screen, they look like Chapter 1 Ramza.  I am ultimately aiming for consistent sprites.  The 0C and the 2C sprites for Ovelia and Alma are perfect across all screens, but they will be removed at their respective events, which is why I was aiming for the Event Modification now that Xifanie brought it up.

The main issue is going to be continuity. Unless you intend to heavily edit the scenes where these characters leave as guests from your party, it's gonna be kinda weird. Since Ovelia is with Delita for about 50% of the story, and Ramza is trying to get Alma back for the latter part of the game. Having both with you will be a bit off... Normally I wouldnt mention this, but you've already mentioned a few things you wanted to not happen that would make it look derpy, so I'm assuming you are trying to do this in a professional manner, which I personally cannot see happening unless you intend to remake ~50% of the story, up to and including the final boss of the game.

Yeah, and those are things I can aim for later on down the road, because they're mostly late-game fixes and I'm just trying to get the basic feel for Chapter 1 and 2 that I was aiming for, so that after I get the 'balance' aspect worked out I can move forward with the next part of the plan, which would be answering those continuity issues.  I feel like once I get a solid grasp on the how of the matter, the what of the matter is a lot easier to approach.  I do appreciate the logical guidance, though, because it does bring up a lot of the issues that come with any 'simple' changes like the ones I've aimed for and reminds me that those are issues that must be resolved, but at the moment, I'm just trying to stay bug-free and 'clean' in my changes.  Efficient coding, so to speak.

[Angel]

Some special characters don't have formation sprites, so that's normal. Ovelia and Alma do, which is why you had all like, "what the actual fuck?" at what you were describing, because it in no way made any sense at all. At all. You never mentioned anyone other than Alma or Ovelia, which changes your question from, "how do I prevent blood from turning white when I store it in my bicycle?" to, "what is 2+2?"

[OveliaAtkascha]

Okay, I apologize for the confusion in what must have amounted to a retarded post.  Thank you Xifanie, I'll take a look into Event Editing and see if that gets the results that I am after.

[Angel]

It wasn't retarded, you just mentioned a well-known and long-solved problem that should have been entirely unrelated to what you had described. But if you are planning on additional special characters beyond Ovelia and Alma who either don't have a formation sprite or their formation sprite is messed up, there's a fix for that, too.

Edit: I'm an idiot; just realized this is for WotL, and UWEntries doesn't work with WotL. So no fix for characters with no formation sprite.

[OveliaAtkascha]

Currently I'm not planning for it, the last one I tried to fix was changing Meliadoul's to hoodless Meliadoul, aaaand that didn't work in the battle formation or party screen sprites, maybe because of what you just mentioned?  Ultimately I'm trying to get a bug-free way of accessing Ovelia full-time and making an alternate reality "ending" where Gafgarion dies early and Ramza joins the Knights Templar along with Ovelia and Agrias.  I've done a little bit of story-line on it, but if I can't get things like the event editing done then I'm not going to go much further with an idea that I can't see come to fruition, you know?

I realize that ultimately it'll probably have to be a PSX Patch, but I enjoy bringing my PSP to work for play testing, so I'm sticking with the WotL version until I literally can't do that any further.

[Angel]

Fortunately, if you can play modded WotL on your PSP, you can also play the PSX version on your PSP (as long as you don't use any of the known console-breaking ASM hacks, of course), so if playing on your PSP is your reason for sticking with WotL, your life just got a whole lot easier!

[OveliaAtkascha]

Oh wow, that will make the whole thing so much easier!  Does that take an app or anything or will the PSP literally run a PSX iso?  Funny, the one thing I know the LEAST about when it comes to this seems to be the PSP's supported options.

[Angel]

You just need PSX2PSP for converting your ISO to to EBOOT format, though it can be beneficial to have popsloader with a full set of POPS versions for getting certain games to work. Converting to EBOOT doesn't take very long, and once it's converted, it will show up on the XMB just like normal PSOne Classics do.

In regards to other games, it's worth noting that FFVII doesn't work as smoothly as the official PSN game once converted, and Valkyrie Profile doesn't work at all. Pretty much everything else I ever converted worked perfectly fine, though!