Razele's ASM Hacks! (A lot of useful info!)

[Vanya]

The first thing you need to remember when dealing with game programming is that everything you learned elsewhere has now become unconventional. You're in a completely different universe now. ^_^

Anywho... Thanks for breaking that down. I was wondering how it all fit together.

Now that we know where the routine for this is we can try to hack it so we can give skills specific weapons they can be used with. ^_^

[The Damned]

Not that I've yet started with hacking things--I just found out yesterday how to get a hold of everything (thanks, LastingDawn)--and thus I shouldn't have an opinion on this, but doesn't the lastest hack just change the Requires Sword box in the Ability Instruction Box?

I'm asking this because what you're saying Vanya makes it sound like it would be possible to attach to actual skills (or their slots) without having to check that box off.

I may be mistaken, though.

[Zozma]

can make weapon specific skills yes, but there is still currently only one available check for this... and so thats why i asked razele to make it allow all sword type weapons to use sword skills (sword, katana, ninja edge, knight sword)

but as you see ld had one so that sword skills only work for knight swords.
zodiac had mentioned adding in some more in blank spots but it appears its more complicated than he first had thought? or something

[Vanya]

It would still require the box to be checked, but it can be modified to take the values from a new table and process them bit-wise to allow any combination of weapon types for any given skill. Its just a matter of finding some free space to expand the code.

That's how I made the Stage Select Screen in Mega Man 5 display the boss names in a specific location. Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but its the same basic procedure.

^_^

[Zozma]

id love to have bow/crossbow only skills and Axe skills without destroying any other slots. just added in...

[Vanya]

Indeed! It would make it easier to create VS style Break Arts, too! ^_^

[The Damned]

Speaking of weapon tables, did anyone ever figure out what the Second Table in the Items Tab of FFTPatcher is for?

[Vanya]

Not a clue! Have you messed with it ever?

[The Damned]

No, I haven't. I haven't messed around with Items that much as is, more Item Attributes. When I've messed around with Items, it's more been graphics or stats.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't affect the Boolean or what works out with Draw Out since I think that's the first table, but I may be incorrect.

[Vanya]

I'll include those in my examination of unknowns.

[LastingDawn]

Someone once said that those are how the game lists them in your menu from top to bottom, I can't recall the proof or not... of if I'm not making this up, but I'm pretty sure whoever it was said something along those lines.

[Gamesoul Master]

I had actually thought the same thing. However, taking a look at one of my later saves, the game simply seems to list them in the order you got them, with the oldest item being at the bottom of the list. I can't find any way of sorting them, and in the use Item command menu, it simply lists them in the order that they're in for the Chemist abilities list. I almost thought for a moment it might be a priority list, but there's no need for priorities for usable items.

Yeah, have only been looking at usable items, because unlike the other lists, there is that Elixir that is out of order, so it seemed the easiest one to analyze.

@Vanya: Well, it's more like... take all that I learned to make clean, robust programs, and realize that game programmers will instead use the quickest, easiest method to do what they want, regardless of how buggy or unconventional it may be... XD

[Vanya]

Items can be sorted to various criteria when you view your inventory in the formation screen.
Press triangle to bring up the sub-manu.
Press X on 'Item'.
Move down and press X on 'List'.
Now you're in the actual inventory.
Press X twice on any item to bring up another sub-menu.
The third option on this menu is 'Order'. (It'll be 'Sort' in my hack)
Press X on 'Order' to bring up a list of criteria to sort your items by.
There are different criteria for each category of items.
^_^

Clean & Robust -> Quick & Easy
That's the gist of it! ^_^

[Armony]

You want it? You got it! Razele has all but decoded Ramza!

[01:12]
[01:12] <razele> Pre-RawStatPA = 96662 / 16384
[01:12] <razele> Pre-RawStatPA = 5.8997802734375
[01:12] <razele> As you can see, you have to put 0x05 or 0x06 as Pre-RawPA
[01:12] <razele> this is dillematic, since 05 as Pre-RawPA will lead his RawPA to 81920 (compare to Normal Level 10 Ramza get 96662)
[01:12] <razele> and 06 as Pre-RawPA will lead his RawPA to 98304 (compare to Normal Level 10 Ramza get 96662)
[01:12] <razele> so if you set it as 05, Ramza get nerf about 14742 RawPA, if you set it as 06 Ramza will get 1642 bonus RawPA.
[01:12] <razele> in the long run, there's not really problem. He just get 1 level bonus, since he get 1642 free RawPA.

[01:12] <razele> One more last thing, the game copied Ramza's stat when you give him a name. So, in order to use Pre-RawStat, you have to start a new game.


 <razele> Brave & Faith  : 0x5a114
[01:12] <razele> Level          : 0x5a18c
[01:12] <razele> Min Pre-Raw HP : 0x5e924
[01:12] <razele> Min Pre-Raw MP : 0x5e925
[01:12] <razele> Pre-Raw Sp     : 0x5e926
[01:12] <razele> Pre-Raw PA     : 0x5e927
[01:12] <razele> Pre-Raw MA     : 0x5e928
[01:12] <razele> Head           : 0x5E929 0x9D Leather Hat      Changed to    9C Grand Helm
[01:12] <razele> Armor          : 0x5E92A 0xBA Clothes          Changed to    B9 Maximillian
[01:12] <razele> Accessory      : 0x5E92B 0xD0 Battle Boots     Changed to    EB Vanish Mantle
[01:12] <razele> Weapon         : 0x5E92C 0x13 Broad Sword      Changed to    25 Chaos Blade
[01:12] <razele> Level 10 Ramza
[01:12] <razele> RawHP = 860160 - 917497 Pre-RawHP = 52.500 [0x34-0x35]
[01:12] <razele> RawMP = 401402 - 430070 Pre-RawHP = 24.500 [0x18-0x19]
[01:12] <razele> RawPA = 96662           Pre-RawPA = 5.900  [0x05-0x06]
[01:12] <razele> RawMA = 77569           Pre-RawMA = 4.734  [0x04-0x05]
[01:12] <razele> RawSP = 107520          Pre-RawSP = 6.563  [0x06-0x07]

What file is this information in? I want to poke around and see if I can find Ramza's byte for gender somewhere.

[Gamesoul Master]

@Armony: Had you actually looked at the first post and the fact that it holds some of the information from the post *you* quoted...

Razele the up and coming hacker, on IRC is finding some things which had been long unknown to us! In but in a couple of minutes he was able to locate all of his equipment! This is mainly for you, Vincent so you can actually start Ramza with a Bow, hehe.

[01:12] <razele> Block : 0x4F129-0x4F12E
[01:12] <razele> SCUS_942.21
[01:12] <razele> Head      : 0x4F129 0x9D Leather Hat      Changed to    9C Grand Helm
[01:12] <razele> Armor     : 0x4F12A 0xBA Clothes          Changed to    B9 Maximillian
[01:12] <razele> Accessory : 0x4F12B 0xD0 Battle Boots     Changed to    EB Vanish Mantle
[01:12] <razele> Weapon    : 0x4F12C 0x13 Broad Sword      Changed to    25 Chaos Blade
[01:12] <razele> Shield    : 0x4F12E 0xFF <Nothing>        Changed to    8F Escutcheon II

<razele> [AI Ignore Transparent] BATTLE.BIN offset : 0x12FD60 change 0x10 to 0x00

It clearly shows that the particular information you're wondering about is in SCUS_942.21.

@Vanya: You know... I saw the option for sorting, and never figured out, despite all my playthroughs, how to sort the list. I always knew about going to the list and such, but I've never tried "double-clicking" on an item to see that sort option. Of course... I rarely use any items (the extent I go to using items is giving Auto-Potion to some of my characters, and selling all my regular potions for better ones... lol). Thanks for that. I will take another look right now.

[Vanya]

No problem and remember, you can sort everything in your inventory including all equipment. ^_^

[Gamesoul Master]

Yeah, already tried that (damn you replied fast). Sorting my items, I couldn't really get it to *just* sort by Type (it seems to do sub-sorts too based on the order you do the sorts). But... Elixir *was* always at the end of the list (top or bottom) for regular items within that 0x00-0x0D range, so maybe there's something to it.

I'll have to try using something else (like swords), to see if I can see something in that.

Edit: Got bored trying to figure it out from defaults, so I swapped some second table values around, seeing if it would change the sort orders at all. Didn't seem to do anything though. I'll try making some more drastic changes to see if that does anything.

Edit 2: Very interesting... I changed around a few of the values, changed all swords, knight swords, and katanas to ninja blades, dropped all prices to 0, changed all weapon powers to 20, and made sure none of them were rare or had any additional attributes (never can be too careful). As soon as I did that and *then* started doing sorts, I noticed that the game began to get very confused about how to sort the items. I swapped a bunch of second table values, and I noticed that those items changed spots in the sort. It actually resulted in some odd order choices on the game's part, but changing that table *did* seem to make the sort work differently, so that's a good start.

[Armony]

@Gamesoul

I did read the first post. Problem is, SCUS_942.21 doesn't go out to address 0x5A114 or beyond, it stops at 0x56FFF. That leads me to believe it's in a different file, although I admit I'm new at this. I've also looked in several other files for those values at those addresses before I posted, including Battle.bin.

Also, I checked the bytes near Ramza's equipment in SCUS_942.21 and none of them contain even his brave and faith.

[Gamesoul Master]

Alright then. Could've said that in the first place (sorry, but your post before sort-of sounded like a n00b question, no offense)... lol.

Since they're consecutive addresses, have you tried simply searching for the values a few at a time?

Edit: The good (but mostly bad) news is that I can't find those values either (unless there's a special case for Ramza where the programmers got lazy and pulled the Brave and Faith from the same address (since they're both 70... lol).

[Armony]

I wouldn't doubt it if the programmers got lazy in that respect. It saves a single byte of space. VERY valuable </sarcasm>
Anyway, I'm going to take the highest address from that set of information, figure out how many bytes that file would have to be minimum, and just search every file that's large enough to see if I can find a matching file. There shouldn't be TOO many files to go through (I hope).