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Hexadecimal math fail/unsure about ENTD flags (byte 2)

Started by Talcall, February 15, 2020, 12:04:40 am

Talcall

event 181, which should appear in  ENTD4.ENT, has delita as the first unit. the second byte, which the Wikipedia says belongs to various flags, is checked for being male (+1) load formation (+10) and save formation(+80)
this should give a value of 8B, however when i check this byte in my hex editor i find it's actually 89; 80 + 8 + 1. Am i missing something here, or are the flags done a little differently to how i originally figured?
(yes, i know how flags work, +1 for the first flag, then double for the second and so on and so forth. this means every numeral possible is a unique combination of any of these collective flags.)
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL
""The only thing more hardcoded than FFT, is more FFT."
    - A wise man"
       - Talcall
  • Discord username: Talcall

Xifanie

I'm still really really confused why you won't use the tools that people have worked very hard to create.
Tools that most people here know how to use well, and thus can easily teach how to use.

No one here who can teach you these things has the time to spare to tutor you rigorously; we all have very busy lives, and I don't want to see the help section get filled with topics without replies making us look like a community that doesn't help its userbase, because we try really hard to. But you are relentless with all your questions that don't seem to lead to anything meaningful and are of no use to anyone but you, as we already have tools for those things... that you know how to use... which is why it's so frustrating.

I just ask you to be mindful of that. Thank you.

And it's +8, not +10
  • Modding version: PSX
Love what you're seeing? https://supportus.ffhacktics.com/ 💜 it's really appreciated

Anything is possible as long as it is within the hardware's limits. (ie. disc space, RAM, Video RAM, processor, etc.)
<R999> My target market is not FFT mod players
<Raijinili> remember that? it was awful

Talcall

I'm sorry for flooding the help section with questions, and I'm sorry I make you feel obligated to answer all of my questions.
I am using the tools available to me, but I'm using them in... A more unorthodox way I'll admit. I have the patcher always propped up in the corner so I can refer back to what everything does. I'm trying to learn my way through what I have available to me, that mostly being data tables, and show my work off to you guys
I just want to try and prove myself to you, but clearly I've been a bit too liberal with the questions.
I'm sorry. I'll try to limit the question making, since I'm just making you feel guilty about it. I shouldn't be so greedy and selfish.
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL
""The only thing more hardcoded than FFT, is more FFT."
    - A wise man"
       - Talcall
  • Discord username: Talcall

3lric

Hey man, I agree with everything Xifanie said above. We had a admin chat about it last night.

That being said. You dont need to prove anything to anyone, ever. However if what you mean by that is that you'd lile to show that you are dedicated and want to contribute to the community, you can still do that simply by being here, doing things, showing things, making mods, etc.

With the exception of ASMers and Spriters, nothing we do here is really taxing or difficult. Its the people who stay here and make content and answer questions to help people out that make all the difference here. We WANT people here and doing things. The issue is more that the questions you are asking, not only cant be answered by some of us, but they also make it look like its harder to mod this than it actually is.

Nothing is wrong with wanting to do things the hard way, if thats your thing, but yes, you would need to accept that youd mostly be on your own in that endeavor and i personally dont see the higher payout for doing it that way.

I joined here back in mid-late 2011 or 2012 IIRC. Shortly after Raven had used Xifanies knowledge and compiler, to make EVSP. If I had instead, started posting the raw event data and started asking Xif and Raven to help me decypher it, i wouldve expected a verbal kick in the ass, since they had _already_ put in the work required for them to no longer have to explain how it worked, so they could move on to working on other things.

I hope that makes sense
  • Modding version: PSX

Nyzer

QuoteNothing is wrong with wanting to do things the hard way, if thats your thing, but yes, you would need to accept that youd mostly be on your own in that endeavor and i personally dont see the higher payout for doing it that way


Pretty much this.

I think I mentioned this really early on, but I just don't see the appeal of doing Patcher work the hard way. I don't see anything you could possibly gain from it. Maybe if you were digging into it on the PSP version which largely can't touch any of the new WotL content, as an example. Or if you were dealing with Tactext, which has quite a few known issues that people just kinda have to work around. But the PSX Patcher seems to be fairly complete as is - I'm not sure what else you could do there.

And what makes this even more confusing is that the end result of any mod you could make this way isn't going to be anything special. Patcher and Tactext changes are very run-of-the-mill, while event editing is largely ignored despite being fairly easy to make minor changes with. Even some of the possible Patcher changes are largely ignored, as one can realize by taking a look at the Blue Mage topic and seeing how many people talk about it like it's some major undertaking when it actually wouldn't have to be, and has already been done in Jot5 as of 2013. Everyone rebalances jobs & special characters. No one modifies events so that Ramza can actually save Zalbaag in that crypt, or to include the missing year of Ramza living as a mercenary, or to give the random generics you start the game with some bit of personality, or to add a few lines to pre-battle dialogue if a specific character is present (it would be really easy to make Mustadio react to finding Agrias just after getting off the boat in Warjilis if he was deployed, to add some more to their budding romance throughout the game), or, hell, even just to give their custom self-insert character a real story presence. I still shake my head at the fact that 1.3 just throws joining guests at the party in major story battles for literally no reason, for example, despite actually featuring event edits at times.

It just feels like your ambition is being wasted - not only on trying to basically reverse engineer an existing, very robust tool, but also on what kind of changes you'll ultimately be putting out there. There are so many things you could be working on that would have the potential to actually add something major to the community: new ability formulas, turning the guest slots into fully functional party slots, adding another chapter to the game, new sprites, helping with the effort to improve PSP modding functionality... and you're just focused on making PSX Patcher changes independently of the Patcher.  :?
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

3lric

Quote from: Nyzer on February 15, 2020, 07:50:04 pm
despite actually featuring event edits at times.


Hey now, I did an okay job on the 1.3 events. Can't let the quality of the events outshine the quality of the mod itself xD
  • Modding version: PSX

Talcall

You know what then?
I'm going to find out the story of what happens to ramza/delita between chapter one and chapter two, and I'm going to make a hack that explores this story more in depth.
Although adding it into this already full game may be an issue, so I may have to pull a Jot5 chapter 1 and replace the story entirely...
Going to make it playable with battles and events, guest characters like rad and gafgarion, might mostly leave the job system alone? There isn't a job shift change between c1 and c2 canonically anyway...
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL
""The only thing more hardcoded than FFT, is more FFT."
    - A wise man"
       - Talcall
  • Discord username: Talcall

3lric

Quote from: Portalenthusiast on February 15, 2020, 11:19:44 pm
You know what then?
I'm going to find out the story of what happens to ramza/delita between chapter one and chapter two, and I'm going to make a hack that explores this story more in depth.
Although adding it into this already full game may be an issue, so I may have to pull a Jot5 chapter 1 and replace the story entirely...
Going to make it playable with battles and events, guest characters like rad and gafgarion, might mostly leave the job system alone? There isn't a job shift change between c1 and c2 canonically anyway...


You can use TLW for that, it leaves event slots open for you to do so and has all its resources available
  • Modding version: PSX

Xifanie

Quote from: Portalenthusiast on February 15, 2020, 11:19:44 pm
You know what then?
I'm going to find out the story of what happens to ramza/delita between chapter one and chapter two, and I'm going to make a hack that explores this story more in depth.

I'm not sure how I feel about that...
Let me explain. Writing good stories is HARD (you will have to fill in the gaps). At least for me. But how many people are proficient at it in the world? It feels like this would work better as a team project, to maintain accuracy & lore. Now the problem with that is that not many people could help you out with actual work. Elric has tutored a dozen people to help him make events for JotF and today only one still does: Nyzer. And it's not from a lack of patience... it's because people always underestimate the amount of time required to make events. Aside from Jumza and Nyzer, all the others quit mid-way (IIRC). Learning to make and perfect events, if you ask me, is easy, but it's still very tedious and time-consuming. My first event ever, DEB vs Kanbabrif, is a 2 minute video and took me 7 hours to make. Sure, it's heavy on the action side of things, but I also single-handedly figured out and documented what 80% of event instructions did at the time before attempting this, so I was as knowledgeable as I could be.

It's a huge ordeal to make a story mod, and it's not something you can just decide overnight. BUT, if you can't pull it off, it's pretty much all on you because we have all the tools to make it happen, and there is Elric and I who know every single aspect of story mod-making involved. Of course, with my brain inflammation and poor health as well as his vastly superior experience, Elric is more skilled at it than I am at this point. Nyzer and Raven also know most things, and I think there's also a bunch of people terrified of me on the FFT: Arena Discord that are familiar with some of these things as well, though I can't vouch for their experience or point to any particular individual.

I have to agree with Elric though, you should definitely go with TLW if that's what you're planning.

A suggestion would be that you could also do what Elric and I did when we first started Event Editing; making video events/bloopers. Though no matter what you should record your events for us to properly review them.
  • Modding version: PSX
Love what you're seeing? https://supportus.ffhacktics.com/ 💜 it's really appreciated

Anything is possible as long as it is within the hardware's limits. (ie. disc space, RAM, Video RAM, processor, etc.)
<R999> My target market is not FFT mod players
<Raijinili> remember that? it was awful

Talcall

I am determined to make this happen. I already have a general list of things I need to get this started (which now includes patching my game over with TLW)
Patch,
Write a story board up, with locations and characters
Code the events, that's the most important part I think,
Then work on random and story battles.
(probably do some tweaking and balance, most Story enemy levels after chapter 1 may have to be buffed up a few)
Maybe this does need a team, but tonight I'm tired enough to call myself a one man army!
this mood may change by morning, or at most after school tomorrow. That stuff is taxing  :?
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL
""The only thing more hardcoded than FFT, is more FFT."
    - A wise man"
       - Talcall
  • Discord username: Talcall

Nyzer

I'd say to aim this to be a fairly short project. Five battles at most, no map movement (yet), basically just having Ramza quickly narrating the major events of his life following his departure from that snowy battlefield. If you can get those major beats complete and then want to try expanding it to a full chapter, your starting point will be much stronger than if you were trying to do it totally from scratch.

You'd definitely want to cover Ramza choosing to discard the Beoulve name, meeting Gafgarion, Rad's recruitment, and Ramza divulging the truth of his past to Gaffy.

Working on Delita's story as well would honestly be biting off more than you can chew, IMO. There aren't a whole lot of blanks to fill in with Ramza's missing year, but Delita undergoes massive changes in personality, alliance, and skillset. Doing that would at least require an entire chapter of its own. It would also give away a lot of the various plot twists that happen over the rest of FFT, so I don't think it would fit in well with the existing game; that would be more along the lines of its own complete mod project.

Of course, you can throw in an event with Delita, similar to the various WotL events. Something like having Delita meet a shrouded figure that saves him from dying in the mountains and says something like "we could use a man with your fighting skills... we have great plans for helping Ivalice get through this period of turmoil" before the screen fades.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown

3lric

If you need event help, check out the event section. I have a very outdated, but still seviceable tutorial in there explaining how a few different things work, which should be enough to get you up and running.

Make sure to grab my unofficial version 2.01 version of EVSP from Ravens EVSP thread as well.
  • Modding version: PSX

Talcall

You may have a fair point about delita, his story is definitely meant to be interpreted after the fact. And besides, I think someone was doing a king of Ivalice hack that was all about delita?
I'll keep his story interaction short and maybe only use a black screen with dialogue.
Something along the lines of someone finding him, and him being so cold probably misinterpreting them as being teta, (he does say teta saved him at zeakden at the ziechile falls Bridge, and I find her actually doing that unlikely)
And yes, hired by gafgarion, is the location blanked as well? I couldn't find anything particularly enlightening on the Wikipedia Page, just that he put himself up for hire... (and changed his name, that's very important)
Regardless I think this thread is getting too long for its original purpose.
  • Modding version: PSX & WotL
""The only thing more hardcoded than FFT, is more FFT."
    - A wise man"
       - Talcall
  • Discord username: Talcall

3lric

Teta didnt physically save him. Its a metaphor, lol

Or if you wanna look at it in a darker light, her body shielded him from the explosion.
  • Modding version: PSX

Raijinili

Solution to the original puzzle:

Quote from: Portalenthusiast on February 15, 2020, 12:04:40 amevent 181, which should appear in  ENTD4.ENT, has delita as the first unit. the second byte, which the Wikipedia says belongs to various flags, is checked for being male (+1) load formation (+10) and save formation(+80)
this should give a value of 8B, however when i check this byte in my hex editor i find it's actually 89; 80 + 8 + 1. Am i missing something here, or are the flags done a little differently to how i originally figured?
(yes, i know how flags work, +1 for the first flag, then double for the second and so on and so forth. this means every numeral possible is a unique combination of any of these collective flags.)
It's actually 1 + 0x10 + 0x80, which is 0x91, not 0x8B. In len8 binary, that'd be 10010001. That 10 is a hex 10, which is a dec 16.

However, 0x89 is, as you say, 1 + 8 + 0x80. In len8 binary, it'd be 10001001.

What you calculated:
10010001
What you observed:
10001001
One is the reverse of the other.

The most likely explanation is that you got the flags backwards. That means Male must be 0x80, not 0x01.
  • Modding version: Other/Unknown