Anyone wanna help finish the hacking on my FFIV:ET project?

[DarknessSavior]

I think I've realized at this point that I'm not the world's most talented hacker, and the more days go by, the more I realize that I have less and less time to finish this and my other projects. I'm also far better at translating scripts.

So far, I've done a ton of work. There isn't much left.

Here's what's done:
   
- Items expanded up to 15 characters each (from 8 ).
- Item, Equip, and Shop menus altered to accomodate them.
- Magic Menu hacked to allow 7 character spell names (from 5). This allows spell names such as “Blizzard” to fit (but not “Thundara” or other longer names).
- Each of the three pointer tables has been hacked and tested.
- Some of the intro dialogue has been translated and inserted.
- The Main Menu has been hacked (much like the j2e FFIV hack, with some improvements).
- The Status menu has been hacked to fit everything (including some things that j2e missed) – no abbreviations!
- Place name boxes have been hacked, and place names have been inserted.
- Battle menu text has been inserted, but has yet to be hacked to fit full names.
- Most system text has been hacked (so that the full message can fit) and inserted.
- The item menu was hacked from two items per line to one item per line.

What needs to be done?

- The way the controller works on the item menu needs to be fixed. Right now, right and left move up and down one space. Up and down move multiple spaces, and the cursor freaks out and moves up a bit when it reaches the bottom of the item list for scrolling. It still works, mind.
- A few system texts were missed (shopkeeper saying "you don't have enough gil", for example)
- The battle menu needs re-doing. Right now we've got "Dark" and "White" and "Summo". The end goal would be "Darkness" and "Summon" and whatnot.
- Battle text needs to be re-done as well, so that full spell names will fit, as well as the end-battle messages (You got (xx) EXP!, etc. Right now this is in English, but cut off).
- The Magic menu could be worked on a bit to fit full names like Leviathan and Thundaga.
- The Equip menu's item selection cursor needs to be set up like the Items menu is. It's still looking for an item on the right side of the menu that isn't there.

That's it, as far as hacking's concerned. I can finish translating the script myself, and Talbain agreed a while back to do the editing on it. If someone experienced wants to push it a bit further, I've been told an 8x8 VWF is doable for FFIV. Not necessary, though.

If I can get someone to sign on to help finish up the hacking, this hack will be the best we can get for FFIV. Once it's done, I plan on releasing a version for vanilla FFIV, and if the demand is high enough, a version with the DS script inserted.

[justin3009]

I'm not too certain yet but I may take a look at the Item Menu control codes and the Battle Menu such.  I've dealt with that enough to know where that's going, but I wouldn't promise that I'd be able to help since the free-time is limited as well.

Though for item/battle menus, I've dealt with that heavily in Tales of Phantasia, Sailor Moon as well, Chrono Trigger Pre-Release, Breath of Fire 2, etc.. I may have enough experience to tinker around but I'm not really sure what else.

[DarknessSavior]

Well, if you've got the time I'd appreciate the help. I feel like you in particular would be a good addition because I've seen a lot of the stuff you've done with a lot of SNES RPGs, not to mention the MMX 3 stuff.

~DS

[KingMike]

- The way the controller works on the item menu needs to be fixed. Right now, right and left move up and down one space. Up and down move multiple spaces, and the cursor freaks out and moves up a bit when it reaches the bottom of the item list for scrolling. It still works, mind.

Make Up/Down do what Left/Right currently do and disable left/right?
I take it you mean pressing Down on the last space does that? I guess it's still expecting Down to have a special function on the last row or the last 2 items.

- A few system texts were missed (shopkeeper saying "you don't have enough gil", for example)
- The battle menu needs re-doing. Right now we've got "Dark" and "White" and "Summo". The end goal would be "Darkness" and "Summon" and whatnot.
- Battle text needs to be re-done as well, so that full spell names will fit, as well as the end-battle messages (You got (xx) EXP!, etc. Right now this is in English, but cut off).
- The Magic menu could be worked on a bit to fit full names like Leviathan and Thundaga.
- The Equip menu's item selection cursor needs to be set up like the Items menu is. It's still looking for an item on the right side of the menu that isn't there.

That's it, as far as hacking's concerned. I can finish translating the script myself, and Talbain agreed a while back to do the editing on it. If someone experienced wants to push it a bit further, I've been told an 8x8 VWF is doable for FFIV. Not necessary, though.

Thing about a VWF on SNES is that you need enough free tiles in VRAM for every single tile of space used on the screen?
For the item list, You got 330 free VRAM tiles (on the same layer?) (assuming you have 22 items on screen at once and you want 15 tiles worth of screen space for each one), plus whatever you need for the description text?
(actually, you might need enough room for 48 names. It seems the items list is a separate layer that stores the entire item list window. Rearranging items might be trouble. I suppose you could change it to just swap tilemap data.)
It seems BG1 is used for the item list, BG2 for the "Item" and description heading window and BG3 for the main menu.)
Maybe that is the "theoretically possible" part?
If you shouldn't have to worry about scrollable and non-scrollable text on the same screen (which could result in the scrollable list of VWF text eventually overwriting the tiles with non-reprinting strings.)
Wait... does each layer use a separate copy of the font? You're going to need to do that to avoid text on one layer corrupting text on another layer.

[DarknessSavior]

I don't really know how to do that stuff with the controller. I was lucky to figure out what I had over a year ago. Is it relatively easy to do such a thing?

Pressing down on the last space causes the cursor to jump back up a few lines, because of the way that scrolling downward like that was originally handled. It's not used to being set up the way that I have it. If you scroll down with left/right, it doesn't do it.

As far as the VWF stuff is concerned, I have no idea. I've simply had multiple talented hackers tell me it was doable (byuu and Gemini). Given the fact that I've already hacked away a lot of the limitations that would normally be associated with a fixed-width font, I really don't think it would be super necessary at this point. But if someone talented enough wants to help, and wants to give it a shot? It's apparently doable.

~DS

[Ryusui]

Controller stuff is simple. Just set a breakpoint for the controller register to trap a read and figure out what it does with the data.

[KingMike]

Games I've seen read the controller constantly (during NMI or such) ($4218/4219 for controller 1) and then store the results to somewhere in RAM (possibly also storing reads modified to store "buttons pushed" and "buttons held" data).
Should be easy enough to find the RAM mirror in a trace, just look for $4218 access.
(the game could be using $4016 to read the controllers NES-style (1 button at a time), but I haven't seen one yet that did.
If reading $4218, each of the bits in $4218-4219 represents a specific button (0= not pressed, 1 =pressed), with the remaining 4 used as a signature value for multitap/mouse/etc., I think. Should be listed in any SNES register documents.)
Then look for where the game accesses that RAM mirror.

[DarknessSavior]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I'll definitely be looking into the controller stuff soon.

~DS

[mopoz]

Hi!
If need translucent text boxes.

[Bregalad]

Wow this looks cool !
But won't it glitch in places where transparency is already used by the game (for example in Mist cave) ?
I remember the BOF2 retranslation had a similar issue.

[justin3009]

Oh wow, that looks so much better with the transparency.  I hope it doesn't bug up in places cause that's darned good looking.

[mopoz]

I think if do not touch the H-DMA channels used by the game, there should not be bugs. The main thing they still do not stop, including its channels in $ 420c.

Sorry for my english

[Bregalad]

The SNES can only handle one transparency at a time.
Therefore, if the game already uses transparency (and it sometimes does) a bug is unavoidable. For example in Mist cave, either there will be a solid textbox over a transparent fog over a solid background, or there will be a transparent textbox over a solid mist. A transparent box over a transparent fog is not possible.

PS : Don't worry about your english I can't be worse than mine.

[mopoz]

Hmm, I did not think about it.
It is necessary to experiment on this.
September 03, 2012, 03:55:12 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

 but need correted palette 

[Gedankenschild]

I really like the idea of shaded text boxes like the GBA version had! 
You actively working on something like that?