I just had an idea. Would it be difficult to create a list of events that call the summon angel and summon demon skills/abilities? I'm sure every patch maker wants to use those slots for more abilities. Here's what I'm thinking: What if we moved those effects to different effect slots, or substituted them for the summon ultimate effect? Could we open those ability slots up for use?
There has got to be away to free these slots up.
I believe events use the ability ID to call the effect, so the effects would still have to be tied to some ability. Unless you could tie them to abilities past 0x200. Is there any difference between how events call abilities below 0x200 and above 0x200?
Not with how they are called no, no difference. However they don't seem to work right (above 200) if they aren't used where and when they should be in vanilla.
Could the events be changed to call the effects directly similar to how Summon Ultimate works?
Move the effect to a skill like CT/Height/3/4/5/Level2 Jump, maybe charges, and call that ability instead.
You can't with FFTPatcher. Because fuck you, that's why. Glain or someone else really needs to fix this.
Quote from: Xifanie on February 07, 2014, 10:37:27 amYou can't with FFTPatcher. Because fuck you, that's why.
You said it Xif.
So, now we just need to figure out which events call these abilities.
They are teleport moves for altima.. Also used in the WotL event in dorter with
Kletian. For the teleporting that is not at all event related... that is actually how they move..
Unless I'm thinkng of the wrong effects.
Are you sure that Summon Angel/Demon are Ultima's teleport abilities? Aren't those are listed as "Teleport 3: Send" and "Teleport 3:Arrive"? If you go to the effect videos page you can see that they aren't the same.
Regardless, what does it take to link those effects to different abilities? ASM? A lot of ASM or a little? If we can move all four of those effects to different abilities we could free up for more ability slots. Which would probably make a lot of patchers squee with delight.
Teleport 3 Send/Arrive (At least last I talked to Xifanie about it) can't easily be moved because they involve lots of hardcoding. You could alternatively give Altima II Fly and Float with 16+ Move to get around then use these slots, but a final boss that just kind of hovers around isn't very intimidating.
You can hex edit the animation for a skill such as CT, Jump, etc. which never actually calls its animation and use it to "store" an Effect for an Event, though, as Xifanie mentioned. I would imagine the data to do this is located on the wiki.
As for which events use these animations, you could simply look up the Event List and Scenario Correlation on the wiki (or open EVSP and set it to the normal Vanilla Event List) and fairly quickly thumb through. The events are mostly clearly named (I redid that list myself years ago) and both Summon Angel and Summon Demon are used for exactly what you'd expect them to. The only time they do something other than what their name implies is when Adramelk sends Zalbag to Hell and then proceeds to forget he can do that to your entire party.
So I've got the hang of changing the effects called during an event. Can I move the abilities to one of the unused Reaction slots? It seems that they have editable effects. Also, there happens to be two unused ones available: 01B8 Reflect and 01BB <Unknown>. This almost seems to good to be true.
Now all that's left for me to do is figure out which events actually use these effin' things.
Edit: Cross off Zalbag going to hell and Celia and Lede transforming into Ultima Demons because it just uses the Summon Ultimate effect.
Edit 2: Ugh. Elric was right all along. The Summon Angel/Demon Effects and Teleport 3 effects are misleadingly named. I was under the impression that When Altima Teleported away it was Teleport 3: Send and when She appeared it was Teleport 3: Arrive. That is not the case. When Altima form 1 teleports away she uses Teleport 3: Send and Summon Angel when she arrives. When Altima form 2 teleports away it uses Teleport 3: Arrive and Summon Demon when she arrives.
I'm really sorry for sending people on this wild goose chase.