Various questions, most are yes/no

[nates1984]

Hello people, how you doing? Did you have a good turkey day? Good, good... I'm just going to jump right in to my questions. Pretend like I wrote a snappy introduction.

1) WORLD.BIN and BATTLE.BIN are the only two files that have to be the same size after you edit them correct? All the other files containing ability, job, and item names and descriptions, as well as dialog during events and what-not, aren't this way? Note: I know all graphical files have to retain their file sizes, this question is just in the context of text.

2) WORLD.BIN and BATTLE.BIN are the only two files you really shouldn't edit with the text editor included with the FFTPatcher correct?

3) I understand there are 6 special skillsets you can't muck with; item, elemental, throw, jump, charge, and draw out, but....

3a) You can fully edit these skillsets if you change the value in the "Action Menu" tab in FFTPatcher to "default," you simply can't mix and match the abilities in the 6 special sets? For example, you can't add Wish to the vanilla Charge skillset, but you could change the Charge skillset to default, remove all the Charge+ abilities, and then add Wish, right?

3b) You can rename the abilities in these 6 sets correct?

3c) Can you remove skills from these sets? For example, say I wanted to remove Charge+20 from the Archer skillset. I know you can't add more and I know you can alter them in certain aspects, but removal?

3d) You can rename the jobs that are attached to these skillsets correct? Like I could change Chemist to Medic, or Samurai to Boobies, or whatever?

4) Outside of the blank spot directly above Potion in the "Ability" tab in FFTPatcher that is used for the standard attack command, are there any other blank slots in any of the tabs that I shouldn't touch?

5) In the "Skill Sets" tab in FFTPatcher the amount of abilities you can assign to a single set is 16, and a couple jobs like Summoner and Wizard hit this cap. Theoretically, could you hex edit additional skills in to go beyond the apparent limit of 16? In other words, was it limited to 16 because no jobs have more then than, or because you can't have more then that?

6) Here's a technical question, in the form of a picture. =P

BATTLE.BIN, I know from looking at SentielBlade's ASM request topic that 0x11eccc is related to Rafa's formula, which is named 1E in FFTPatcher, hence the second part of the question, although that seems like a hell of a lot of space to dedicate to one formula.



7) You can mix and match any sprite/skillset combination for enemies in ENTD, but if you let the player invite an odd combo it'll revert to the sprite the skillset is attached to, glitch, or crash the game, correct?

8} You could replace Bard and Dancer with new sprites, abilities, ect, to create new female and male only classes right? Theres nothing glitchy with messing with these guys like the jobs/skillsets I mentioned in question 3?

Luckily editing sprites and effects is pretty well documented in the forums, so I don't need to ask any questions about those. Heh, this is kind of a wall o' text, sorry about that.

[Xifanie]

WHAT THE FUUUCKKK!!!!

[VincentCraven]

I cannot guarantee that these are correct, but...


1) All files must be the same size to put back into your game safely. You may be able to get away with a slight difference in size, but you are just asking for trouble, since it will truncate the extra bytes out.

2) You can edit any file in the text editor as long as you make sure each part within each file stays the same size.  Adding stuff to one part and deleting stuff from other parts of WORLD.BIN will cause errors, no doubt.  Other areas have a little more leeway.

3a)  Yes.  Any ability that is in a "special" skillset like Pitfall, Charge+3, etc. will probably not work anymore, just to clarify.

3b) Yes.

3c) Yes.

3d) Yes.  Name change is always possible as long as the name is the same size. If you replace a longer name with a smaller name, you will want to fill in those blank spots with spaces until it is back up to size, just to be safe.

4) ??? Idk

5)  It's probably possible but we don't know where you'd do that and you'd probably mess up your game.  Not that 16 skills isn't like an insane amount to have in the first place >_>

6) 4 double zeros just means there is no opcode there.  The game runs over it like nothing is there.  From what I've seen, formulae aren't necessarily the same length.  The guy who knows more about it already responded to this topic, and probably thought you had too many questions at one time. Man, I really need to start on that Wiki...

7) Hmmm.  I forget which one overrides, but I know that if you change jobs and go back, then the job will reset to it's proper primary.  Unless you choose one that normally makes it crash, the game will pick out the original combo.

You change change them to new abilities if you change the skillset back to default, but I think this is a case in which the sprite will not add on for some reason.  Maybe I'm thinking of something else?


Well, that's the gist of it.

[Archael]

4) Outside of the blank spot directly above Potion in the "Ability" tab in FFTPatcher that is used for the standard attack command, are there any other blank slots in any of the tabs that I shouldn't touch?

Nice questions. I might be able to help with this one.

We should probably make one big FAQ and add info like the important blank skill slots to it.

Anyway, do not touch the very first skill listed in the ENTD Ability tab.

<Nothing>

It's actually used when anything from the Archer's skillset fires.

It uses some of <Nothing>'s values when the Charge + X goes off.

If you change the effect, nothing will happen. It seems to ignore the effect file.  (Which is 000 Crashes Game)

But if you change the targeting flags, such as un-checking evadeable, counter flood, Blade Grasp, Ranged Weapon, etc etc, you'll directly be modifying Charged Attacks.

[nates1984]

Yeah, there's a "Come here to ask questions before you make a new thread" thread over in the sprites section, but no equivalent for general or ASM hacking. The big problem is there's a constant flood of new information, so it can be hard to figure out the basics considering knowledge is always being updated around here. I actually looked through all four pages of threads in this section. =X

Anyways, thanks for the answers guys.

[Gamesoul Master]

Very glad you asked these questions. So much of this information is scattered in hard-to-find places, a few of these questions have actually been on my mind lately, as I've been wanting to change more and more things. Really could use a solid FAQ addressing a bunch of these issues. It really wouldn't be so difficult either, if it was broken down properly. Just take each tab from FFTPatcher, and address any difficult questions on each page. Could make it a group task. I'd be willing to help too, even if that meant combing the forums to find things for a page... lol.