ALMA 4: Excalibur grants Forever: Orlandu

[pokeytax]

Okay, I patched up the leak. See if this works. Thanks for finding the bug!

[MysticKnightFF5]

I could see us adding many stat boosting support skills using this.

[LastingDawn]

Appears to work great now! Thanks Pokeytax for a speedy resolution!

[Dome]

Awesome tool!
Any chance for this to be turned into an .exe?

[Celdia]

Well, its official. I will be using ALMA for CCP. Thank you for a wonderful tool.  ^_^

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Have you been able to make any progress on making this display values properly?

I've been wanting to use ALMA to add HP/MP values to my Weapons/Shields/etc. but I don't feel okay doing so if the display doesn't work.  I know it's one of those nitpicky things that doesn't matter for functionality, but it matters hugely for presentation of whatever uses it, and I'm not the kind of person who is willing to let shoddy presentations slide on anything that's not an Alpha/Beta release.

[pokeytax]

I know it's one of those nitpicky things that doesn't matter for functionality, but it matters hugely for presentation of whatever uses it

No, I quite agree. I doubt I could bring myself to modify normally previewable stuff in ALMA until it's fixed either.

ALMA 4 with previews/better passives/ALMAscript is on the list, right behind fixing RAD to simply and properly display sprites. I've just done minimal hacking lately.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

That's good to hear then. I'll be working on using the functionality on some level then if it's something you'll definitely be fixing.

Not rushing, just making sure it was something you intended to resolve at some point.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Will the battle.bin reprogramming project incorporate ALMA's functionality?  What about the ARH?

[pokeytax]

ALMA "lives" in SCUS so it's unlikely, although it might make parts of ALMA redundant. I will try to make sure ALMA has a toggle to play nice with both vanilla and anything FDC does.

ALMA 3 will need a slightly upgraded ARH to be worth the effort so I will probably stitch that into the spreadsheet. If no one else updates the ARH to work with any major BATTLE.BIN recompilations, I will, since it's quite fundamental.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

No, I mean will the battle.bin project include, say, more item attributes, and other aspects of the in-depth hacks?

[RandMuadDib]

i was under the impression that the battle.bin project was mostly about modifying formulas and in-combat things like knockback and status?

[RavenOfRazgriz]

No, I mean will the battle.bin project include, say, more item attributes, and other aspects of the in-depth hacks?

It mostly covers formula, Reactions, Reaction Triggers, and some Support Ability coding stuff.  There won't be much in the way of direct overlap I think.  We may end up overlapping with Pride's Spell Proc hack if we can't think of anything better to do with a bit of space we have sitting around currently, but that's about 50/50 I'd estimate.

I don't think anything about it will make it incompatible with standard ALMA or ARH, though.  It actually forces to use ARH because it removes the Requires Sword and Requires Materia Blade flags for more useful features like toggled Recoil.

i was under the impression that the battle.bin project was mostly about modifying formulas and in-combat things like knockback and status?

You are correct.  Knockback / Status / Formula / Reactions, etc.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

I'm getting off topic, but what are the chances that you'll find something new as you go along, and then you'll have to go back and rewrite something?  Or is it always like that?

[pokeytax]

I'm getting off topic, but what are the chances that you'll find something new as you go along, and then you'll have to go back and rewrite something?

100% (there's always something more)

RAD and ALMA will be rewritten as necessary to fit the needs of the BATTLE.BIN project (modest, because they don't really touch BATTLE.BIN much by design). They are meant to complement that project by providing a robust character customization system. It would be heresy not to use both.

[formerdeathcorps]

I'm getting off topic, but what are the chances that you'll find something new as you go along, and then you'll have to go back and rewrite something?  Or is it always like that?

From personal experience, that happens virtually every month after the 2nd on my formula hack.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

How old are you guys?  Will being a master of assembly language help you get a job later in life?  Do you have portions of battle.bin nearly memorized, so much so that you rewrite the oldest portions fastest?

If I haven't said it before; thank you.

An observation: Dragon Heart activates even if blocked by shield.  Either it activates upon attempted HP damage or the shield block routine is buggy.

And how much of a pain are these requests?
1. Counter-Mimic.  Counter HP damage (or attempted HP damage) with the last allied or allied guest action.
2. Retribution.  Counter HP damage (or attempted HP damage) with same action.  Basically, add another counter-magic magic flag that can be attached to a reaction slot.
3. An additional Silence flag, which can be attached to another status effect, to allow both silence and addle/palsy.

http://bsfree.shadowflareindustries.com/?s=1&d=8&g=9446
I was looking at those egg hatching codes.  Pokeytax, do these codes have anything not covered in the character data block?

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Dragonheart / Dragon Spirit activates using the Countergraspable flag, which is why it can activate when damage is blocked.

As for things requiring new flags - I know FDC has them written down somewhere, but I'm unsure how many unused flags the Formula Hack has for those kinds of things.  (You're limited by the boxes in FFTPatcher, you can't make them out of thin air, just hotwire stuff the way your ghetto friend does when he jacks cars.)  In addition, for them to work with Reactions/Charge/Throw/Supports/etc, they need to be in the top or side flag boxes, most of which are already claimed as far as I remember to allow for things like customizable Reaction triggers later, allowing Silence Flag to suppress R/S/M potentially, etc.  I'll bug FDC and see if there's room for anything like that, though I doubt we'll know for sure until he has a usable release out because stuff's getting constantly reorganized.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Okay, I'm done bothering you guys.  Thanks for being a good sport and all.

[pokeytax]

I was looking at those egg hatching codes.  Pokeytax, do these codes have anything not covered in the character data block?

These modify the lower half of the gender byte in the SCUS unit data (which is currently unknown AFAIK). This might be where egg hatching status is stored. To be honest it's not a high-interest area. I looked this up in the Gameshark Handbook (Part One).