The limitations of hacking this game. (sorry for so many topics)

[Philogosten]

So the total sprite limit of 9 is done because of the vram, I get that. Then things like the total slots for sprites, skills, jobs, maps in the game and all that were probably limited because the amount of data that could be held by a disc back then. Now the disc size getting a lot larger is not a problem as discs now have a lot more space than back then and if you are using an iso on your comp then space is REALLY not an issue. So the one limitation I am seeing is the emulator, if it was set to allow more than just the standard amount of vram that a ps1 had then limitations could be removed right?

So basically my question is. If epsxe used more total vram then could a hack be made that removes the sprite limits and increases the total available slots for jobs and all that fun stuff?

[Choto]

Yes and no. If the physical limitations were removed that would only be the start. There is quite a lot of code that loads an amount of data in to certain places for each VRAM slot. There are more VRAM slots than 9, but the rest are used for display things like items, the map, text, etc. So you would have to program the game to load a sprite in there instead of whatever else it's using. The other slots may have a different structure too as they were intended to be used for things other than sprites. Unless there's another way to get around the issues, we're probably SoL on that front.

[Glain]

Yeah, you'd basically have to reprogram the entire game, as the coding is based around having the limitations that it does... at which point you might as well just make a new game for the PC.

The amount of data that can be stored on a disc wasn't so much the problem (a lot of the disc space is actually taken up by huge video files) as how much can be stored in the PSX's whopping 2 MB of RAM.

[Philogosten]

I see. However I could program in more slots after the ones used for loading the map and all right? Just adding in like maybe 8 additional slots to load character sprites with? (If so then I know what I will be doing for the next month)

[Choto]

You'd be doing it probably for the next several years. It would take that much work and time. We can edit quite a bit about this game, but changing large framework structures is generally more work than it's worth. At that point you might as well learn Python and help program Tethical.

Also if you programmed over those additional slots, maps/items/etc. wouldnt' display..

[Philogosten]

Several years? I think you are exaggerating. I am pretty sure even making the game from scratch would not take that long. Well I can do some work in python. (Thanks to Oblivion modding there) Tethical does sound like it would be cool but if I were to work on a game made from scratch I would start my own so I could have complete creative control over the story and characters. Well I had not planned to program over those slots but to expand the number total and have the additional sprites load after the map and all. Now I am not sure how well that would work to have some sprites loading after everything else. Might cause them to be overlapped by objects loaded before but that is just a guess.

[Angel]

Realistically speaking, it would be years of work. This is assuming you have a job/school/responsibilities and are not in front of your computer working with obsessive dedication at every waking moment, which honestly isn't expected of anybody. It's a hobby; people get burned out. And it's not rewriting one thing, it's rewriting many many things that are affected by the required changes, many of them hard coded. It would be an ongoing adventure in trial, error, testing, and learning. And more error and more testing. Not impossible, just more than would be reasonably expected of any one person to accomplish in less than a year.

Also, making a game from scratch would honestly take less time, since you already know what's going into it and what will be affected by any change that you make along the way, rather than pouring over line after line of machine code wondering what the hell those people were smoking.

[Philogosten]

Hmmm I see your point. Probably not the best project for me to undertake then. Especially since I tend to overlook small details that end up sometimes being borderline catastrophic.