[Jiggers]

So its 5 AM and I can't see straight no more.

I got the equip menu working just about how I want it to, for now.

I got some scroll going on in the shops.

Code: [Select]

@ScrollListDown:
    LDA #4
    STA cursor
    LDA item_box_offset
    CMP #$1B
    BCC :+
    JMP @DownReturn
  : INC item_box_offset
    JSR WaitForVBlank_L
    LDA #0
    STA menustall
    STA $2001 
    JMP ShopSelectBuyItem


@ScrollListUp:
    LDA #0
    STA cursor
    LDA item_box_offset
    BNE :+
    JMP @UpReturn
  : DEC item_box_offset
    JSR WaitForVBlank_L
    LDA #0
    STA menustall
    STA $2001
    JMP ShopSelectBuyItem
Problem at the moment is there's massive screen flicker when updating the list... and then after pressing A or B, the screen goes all janky. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/509200240092643338/549532406227664906/unknown.png

The menus seem to work normally despite this.


Some maybe-dumb questions:
If the screen is already turned on, and I turn it on again, does that harm anything?

I thought calling WaitForVBlank would wait for... you know, and then do the drawing in that time, so there wouldn't be flickering from the screen turning off at the wrong time? Basically, um, how do I get rid of that screen flicker. Should I be setting scroll too?

If I can get that fixed, then I can fix the weird pause in battle when it updates the side-bar with HP and stuff, too...

[Disch]

If the screen is already turned on, and I turn it on again, does that harm anything?

No.  That's fine.

I thought calling WaitForVBlank would wait for... you know, and then do the drawing in that time, so there wouldn't be flickering from the screen turning off at the wrong time?

"Flicker" can describe a lot of things, so it's hard to say for sure.  But if you are waiting for VBlank before turning the screen off, then doing your drawing, you should be fine as long as you finish all your drawing and turn the screen back on before VBlank ends.  If you fail to do that, you'll get black bars and probably a garbled scroll on the following frame, which might be the flicker you're talking about.

Note that VBlank is a fixed length of time, regardless of whether or not the screen is off.  Turning the screen off for VBlank doesn't really gain you anything.

Basically, um, how do I get rid of that screen flicker. Should I be setting scroll too?

Yes.  The scroll and the PPU address set by $2006 are actually the exact same thing (the NES basically uses the PPU address to determine where to start drawing from, effectively making it the scroll value).  So any time you draw anything with $2006/2007, you should be resetting the scroll to whatever you want it to be immediately after.



EDIT:

Note that the game has a built-in mechanism for drawing things in menus without turning off the screen.  The 'menustall' variable you're clearing will split large draws across multiple frames so as never to spill outside of VBlank.  So.... if I'm remembering properly (and I might not be)... to scroll the shop inventory all you'd have to do is build a big string in RAM of the text you want to display in that box, then draw that single string using DrawComplexString with menustall=1, and the game will automatically draw a bit, wait for vblank, draw a bit more, etc.

.... but that MIGHT be too slow as I think it only draws a few lines per frame, and that shop box is pretty tall.  I dunno.  *shrug*

[Jiggers]

Ughhh...

Code: [Select]

    LDA SellingEquipment ; JIGS - if this is 2, turn screen off to draw
    CMP #02
    BNE :+
   
    JSR WaitForVBlank_L
    LDA #0
    STA menustall
    STA $2001
    DEC SellingEquipment
   
    :
   
    LDA #$02
    JSR DrawShopBox        ; draw shop box #2 (inv list box)

    LDA #<(str_buf+$21)    ; load up the pointer to our string
    STA text_ptr
    LDA #>(str_buf+$21)
    STA text_ptr+1
    JSR DrawShopComplexString  ; and draw it

    LDA #$1E
    STA $2001 ; turn screen on if it was off   
From Screen off to Screen on, its 14936 cycles... If I move the DrawShopBox part, it is 11258 cycles. I guess its just too big of a string to draw with the screen off at all.

Unless I write another drawing routine just for this--the string buffer is mostly control codes, so the drawing routine basically has to swap banks to get the actual names each time. Either I do that or set up inventory to scroll 5 items at a time... Which means it would be best if the inventory was divisible by 5. Or 12 5s and a 4 with a blank at the end. Well! I'll get to it then.

In other news, I feel like I reached peak programmer with this:

;; this routine temporarily sets cursor to bytes in the string buffer
;; which make it think its pointing to a 41st weapon or armor
;; which has its permission bits all set so no one can equip it...
;; which causes everyone to return to normal pose!

[Vanya]

Yeah, that last bit is pretty slick.

[Disch]

From Screen off to Screen on, its 14936 cycles... If I move the DrawShopBox part, it is 11258 cycles. I guess its just too big of a string to draw with the screen off at all.

Yeah VBlank is a little over 2000 cycles.  If you're doing a sprite DMA, it's closer to 1700.  So... yeah that's way too much to draw in a single frame.

Might have to just have a custom draw routine.


.... then again.... this is MMC5... and MMC5 has a vertical split screen mode....  In fact... this would be the absolute perfect use for it.

[Jiggers]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1M8Sv419Dvb2fn95olNiu2gYYUTt288d-

Version 0.32!

What's new and fixed:

* Buying in an item shop and pressing B to cancel now actually cancels...

* Shop keeper text has been updated (most of it) to be more centered in the box, and spread out with double line breaks to look neater, hopefully.

* New equip inventory stuff! Weapons and Armor options in main menu consolidated into "Equip" option. Press left and right in equip window to swap characters faster. Press A on an inventory slot to swap gear. Weapons and Armour have different windows, but all armor types share the same window.

* Weapon and Armor capacity is 64 items each.

* Mages start with a staff, fighter and thief start with small knives. Blackbelt has nothing but fists. Everyone has cloth armor.

* Equipping and un-equipping things should change stats properly... but if you know they're not, let me know.

Weapon and Armor inventory window:
* Press A to select item (tries to equip it). If item is equippable in that slot, to that character, it will swap the currently equipped item (seen in upper right little box) with the selected item.

* Press Select to access swap mode. Cursor turns a colour, pick the item you want to swap! Cursor turns another colour, pick the second item to swap! Errors if you try to swap the same item, the Discard option, or the currently equipped item (it was going to be a HUGE headache to allow swapping in that slot, sorry.) You cannot have blank spaces between items; the list will auto-sort to remove blank spots.

* Selecting the Discard option turns the cursor red, and from there, you can delete anything but the Discard option itself. Even works with currently equipped item!

* The way the cursor moves in this menu is a little wonky, but I tried to make it make sense. If you're in the first or second column and move down, it will wrap to the top of the second and third, and same going backwards. Up from the top of first column and down from the bottom of third will both hit the currently equipped item box.

Buying and Selling:
* At the moment, selling a character's equipped items is not supported. You can only sell from the inventory. The inventory scrolls by 5 items if you have them. It will scan ahead 5 slots, and if it sees a 0 in the list (first item on the next "page"), it will not scroll.

* If you have room in your gear inventory, you can choose to currently equip what you buy in the appropriate slot--if its equippable by that character. The current item will be moved to inventory. Or you can skip equipping it and put it directly in inventory.

* Characters have been moved into a straight line, and they also do a little jig when the cursor is hovering over something they can equip! Please let me know if they dance in magic shops or item shops or the inn or the clinic! They should not be doing that.


BUGS:

* I haven't even touched the battle menu for non-potion items... Expect it to be super, super screwy.

* The inventory window only shows 32 items still. So even if you have 64, you can only see the first 32 for now.

More stuff:

* I haven't gotten around to getting weapons and armor having a quantity yet.

* I wanna add little arrows to the boxes like in FF3, showing when you can scroll up or down, maybe.

[Vanya]

Dude, is that a new text effect on the opening story?
It's frickin' awesome!!

Will play a bit more tonight.

EDIT: Did some quick testing and everything seems to be working perfectly. I have to do a closer inspection of the equipment stats.

One thing that stuck out to me though is that sometimes the pose used by the characters in the shop menu isn't always super clear who changed poses if you aren't paying attention. If it is possible, I suggest that when the poses are updated, that characters that can't equip an item use either the stone palette or switch to the critically injured or death pose.

And I know you aren't working on the battle stuff right now, but it stuck out to me once again, like it always does when I play FF1, that there is no way for a character to skip their turn besides using an item with no spell effect. (Which is pretty lame.) So a defend command might be a great addition in the future.

[Jiggers]

Yeah, its been there since the start of this thread. XD Thanks!

Also updated the .32 zip file again... I had the "pose if equip" variable getting set inside a shop routine that was being used for more than the weapon and armor shops; moved it out, so the characters don't get over-excited about purchasing heal potions anymore! Bug testing is rough.

[Vanya]

Logic errors are the bane of my existence. :/

[Jiggers]

So... how should using an item in battle work?

My current idea is:
Take away the DRINK menu option.
Make the ITEMS option open a sub-menu: POTION, EQUIPMENT, WEAPONS, ARMOR
Then, choosing POTION opens the old DRINK menu.
Choosing EQUIPMENT (or EQUIPPED, whatever sounds better), shows a list of that character's items.
Choosing WEAPONS will allow scrolling through the weapon inventory...
Same for ARMOR.

Why move the DRINK menu? Because Battle menus have to be an even number for some reason. While I could just write a new menu routine just for the ITEMS option to only have 3 choices, its easier just to use what's already there. Plus, that makes a spot for having a unique command for each class...

I definitely do not like the idea of swapping equipment in battle. From an "I'd have to code it" perspective, anyway. That's just adding a whole other layer of confusion to how stats are handled by magic and equipment... Maybe much later when I'm more confident nothing is broken.

What I've done tonight is moved all the weapon, armor, and enemy data into Bank Z, except for the spells weapons and armor cast. Bank C now has 3,219 bytes free. $B00 of Enemy ROM data is stored in RAM (swapped to the other side, where save games are.) This is either temporary... or not. I'll either move all the routines that need to check Enemy ROM data to Bank Z, or swap RAM to have it do that.

The swap thing is kinda dumb. Even if its basically immediate, its just too much turning it on and off for every single byte load.

One thing that stuck out to me though is that sometimes the pose used by the characters in the shop menu isn't always super clear who changed poses if you aren't paying attention. If it is possible, I suggest that when the poses are updated, that characters that can't equip an item use either the stone palette or switch to the critically injured or death pose.

And I know you aren't working on the battle stuff right now, but it stuck out to me once again, like it always does when I play FF1, that there is no way for a character to skip their turn besides using an item with no spell effect. (Which is pretty lame.) So a defend command might be a great addition in the future.

Yeah, the difficulty in seeing some poses (white mage in particular) was the reason for moving their sprites into a straight line. I gotta think about how I'd do that. Adding the stun ailment? Basically every frame its adding the confusion ailment to characters, and I updated the out of battle sprite drawing to have them cheer-pose when that happens. Same thing done when swapping them in the menu. Then it has to wipe the ailment out after, without taking away poison or death or stone... So, adding stun in should make them crouch easily enough... I hope.

I generally use the Hide option to skip a turn, now. But yeah... defending would be more useful for that. Just not sure there's a bit left for it in the command byte. I'll put it on the To Do list!

[Mari42]

So... how should using an item in battle work?

My current idea is:
Take away the DRINK menu option.
Make the ITEMS option open a sub-menu: POTION, EQUIPMENT, WEAPONS, ARMOR
Then, choosing POTION opens the old DRINK menu.
Choosing EQUIPMENT (or EQUIPPED, whatever sounds better), shows a list of that character's items.
Choosing WEAPONS will allow scrolling through the weapon inventory...
Same for ARMOR.

Why move the DRINK menu? Because Battle menus have to be an even number for some reason. While I could just write a new menu routine just for the ITEMS option to only have 3 choices, its easier just to use what's already there. Plus, that makes a spot for having a unique command for each class...

I definitely do not like the idea of swapping equipment in battle. From an "I'd have to code it" perspective, anyway. That's just adding a whole other layer of confusion to how stats are handled by magic and equipment... Maybe much later when I'm more confident nothing is broken.

What I've done tonight is moved all the weapon, armor, and enemy data into Bank Z, except for the spells weapons and armor cast. Bank C now has 3,219 bytes free. $B00 of Enemy ROM data is stored in RAM (swapped to the other side, where save games are.) This is either temporary... or not. I'll either move all the routines that need to check Enemy ROM data to Bank Z, or swap RAM to have it do that.

That’s a perfect idea, so therefore people will have more options to be able to use/cast items IB where the players won’t be using too much magic since the “Drink” option is odd name for a title and slots are very short. That bothered me, but with you doing so it’s a perfect idea.

[KingMike]

Drink was originally "kusuri" (medicine) but I guess DRINK was what they came up with in the official translation to fit within the original screen space/character limit.

[Vanya]

So... how should using an item in battle work?

Having a sub-menu set up is a good idea.

Drink: USE ITEM might be a good alternative since they are found under the ITEMS menu.
Equipment: is fine.
Weapons: has an issue...
Armor: has the same issue... and it isn't the names...

The issue is that access to all of the items that can cast a spell throws things a bit off balance.
I'm pretty sure the remakes handle it by making spells cast from an item ignore the user's INT when calculating the effects of the spell so that they are minimally effective.

So you'd probably want to do something like that here.
Or come up with some other limiter so that a bunch of spells don't suddenly become obsolete.

Some ideas:
- create a limit to how many time a character can use items to cast spells in any given battle.
- expand each character's equipment slots so they can carry extra 2 or 3 extra items for casting and/or swapping purposes. And don't include the WEAPONS or ARMOR options in the ITEMS sub-menu.
- replace all the spells used by items with new exclusive spells that are weaker than the originals and are not available to be learned in magic shops.
- do the INT patch upgrade to increase spell effectiveness but but don't include that boost when casting from an item.

Doing an equipment swap thing would probably be a can of worms programming wise.
And realistically you should only be able to swap weapons and shields.

Edit: On a side note, is it feasible to rearrange palettes so that the there are 3 available for character sprites like in Final Fantasy 3?

[Jiggers]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/516487781091115009/550824025593479168/Capture.PNG

Leaving that last menu slot open in case I figure out something new to add (Class change???)--meanwhile, made it more modern FF-styled!

I like the idea of each character having a little gear bag of spare weapons to cast with. That would be so much simpler than scrolling 64 or 32 weapons in battle. (Drawing battle boxes is the worst thing ever.) I guess it would look like the old equip menu, but 2 slots for each character. That would be 8 items displayed in the battle menu...

And that would leave 3 character stat bytes left.

3 palettes: I've thought about this.

From my understanding, once something is drawn to the background, it can't be changed, right? That's how they get a ton of colours on screen at once, changing palettes mid frame-draw, as well as having huge intro screens that use more unique tiles than can be loaded at once?

So each time a character is stoned, it would be feasible to undraw the sprite, load the sprite into background tile RAM instead, swap a background palette to grey (or the blues if you want to add in a frozen statue ailment!), draw it where the character used to stand.

For now... I did a thing! For every enemy in battle, their ROM stats are loaded with the RAM stats for easier access. This is 27 bytes per enemy, 243 in total. This could be upped to 28 bytes per enemy if there's another stat to add. For now, I've given them 1 extra--an item that can be stolen from. I haven't coded this in at all yet, its just there, waiting to be used. And now that I think about it, it probably won't work just like that at all.

It might have been simpler to add a RAM byte instead of a ROM byte (to switch when their item is gone), then have a LUT based on the enemy type. The LUT could randomize the item they have--imps could have cloth armour as well as small knives, and it could swap between which one you steal--as well as have an offset byte so that the stealing code would know if its weapon, armour, potion, or what have you. Ah, well... one extra ROM byte isn't hurting, for now.

I'm gonna keep poking at it before I upload another update though.

[Disch]

From my understanding, once something is drawn to the background, it can't be changed, right?

The long and short answer to this question is "no, that's not correct."

But I'm not sure I understand the question properly, because OBVIOUSLY the background can be changed or else all games would have to be just 1 static screen.  Do you mean changed between frames?  Changed mid-frame?  Both of those are possible, but the latter is difficult.

That's how they get a ton of colours on screen at once, changing palettes mid frame-draw, as well as having huge intro screens that use more unique tiles than can be loaded at once?

I'm not SUPER familiar with FF3 but I don't think it does anything really fancy like this.  AFAIK the only screen-splitting it does is for the battle menu that pans to the side.

That said... palette changes mid-frame are EXTREMELY tricky and there are only a small handful of games which actually do it -- I'm pretty sure FF3 isn't one of them.

More common techniques to get more graphics on screen would be a CHR bankswap (or a nametable switch) mid-frame.  Both of those usually can be done in 1 or 2 writes and aren't SUPER timing critical.  But again I don't even think FF3 does this.  I could be wrong though.

So each time a character is stoned, it would be feasible to undraw the sprite, load the sprite into background tile RAM instead, swap a background palette to grey (or the blues if you want to add in a frozen statue ailment!), draw it where the character used to stand.

This is definitely possible.  The tricky part is finding the space for the player sprites in the BG CHR.  Most of it is in use already.

This would be sort of "easier" with MMC5's extended attribute mode, but "easier" is misleading because that's an entirely different can of worms that would require rewriting a ton of drawing code.

[Jiggers]

Oh, I mean like... if you draw something to the background, then change the palette that was used to draw it, that doesn't automatically change what was already drawn. You'd have to re-draw the background again to apply that palette, wouldn't you? I wouldn't dare try to do anything mid-frame.

And there is space for 6 tiles of character! Between the enemy graphics and the lettering, there's some Japanese text with a / in front of it. Its actually there at the end of every batch of enemy tiles. I'm just not sure if those tiles have to stay there every time the screen updates...?

[Disch]

Oh, I mean like... if you draw something to the background, then change the palette that was used to draw it, that doesn't automatically change what was already drawn. You'd have to re-draw the background again to apply that palette, wouldn't you?

No.  You can change the palette without rewriting to the nametable, and the new palette will take effect immediately.

Some basics about how the frame is rendered:

- The game sets some data.  Notably:  nametables, attribute tables, and palettes
- The NES, during frame rendering, will read that data and draw pixels based on the contents of that data in real time, at that exact moment
- Once an individual PIXEL is visibly on the screen, then and only then* is it too late to change it (at least until next frame)

* Note that there's some buffering going on so it's actually too late to change it a few cycles before it's actually visible -- but for a general idea this is "close enough"


So if you want to write to the attribute table to change palette assignment for a 16x16 block -- that will IMMEDIATELY change the attributes for that block.  You do not need to redraw the block -- the nametable still contains the old data that it used to.

And there is space for 6 tiles of character!

That's enough for 1 character.  What if multiple people in your party are turned to stone?  I guess you could have a common "stone" graphic that is used for every class.

I'm just not sure if those tiles have to stay there every time the screen updates...?

I *THINK* the '/' slash is used somewhere (maybe in the original start menu?), but I'm 100% sure the other characters are not used anywhere and can be safely replaced.  =)

[Vanya]

Final Fantasy 3 doesn't do anything wierd with the palettes as far as I know.
In battle and in the menu, there are three palettes dedicated to the character graphics and one that changes as needed.
The remaining palette changes as needed.
It is used by the hand pointer, weapon graphics, and spell affects.

Final Fantasy 1 uses only two dedicated palettes for the character graphics and one is dedicated to the hand pointer.
The remaining palette functions just like in FF3 except that it isn't used by the hand pointer.

So I imagine the only thing you need to do is change the hand pointer object to use the revolving palette and add appropriate code to change the colors in the revolving palette whenever you need to load the hand pointer.

That should leave things set up just like FF3 and now some of the classes can have a 3rd color scheme.

Anywho...

Love the menu layout. Now just shift all the little boxes to the right side and we're in business!!

I am 100,000% behind having a class change command!!!!!
My ideal set up for the classes is to have the 6 basic ones available as normal, having the option to class change at will, and the 6 advanced ones are all locked until after the Bahamut event is completed.

Speaking of which, one of the things I suggest adding in is something like the enhanced magic menu that Grond did in his hack. Being able to change around your spells would be very useful in general, but even moreso in tandem with being able to change classes.

Oh! About the gear bag. If I understand, you are saying that each party member gets to hold 2 extra items and all 8 are available to the whole party during battle? That would be like the perfect middle ground between limited personal inventories and full open party inventory!! Love it!

That thing you did: Damn! That's great. That pretty much paves the way for both random item drops and a Steal command! BTW, having each monster drop items that make sense has always been a thing I prefer to have.

I'd probably take it even further. Maybe too far. See I think that if I could, I would actually rather have non-intelligent monsters not drop Gil at all. I actually think that as tedious as it could become I'd prefer to go around getting monster hides, fangs, scales, etc. that I could sell of for gold. I kinda dig the whole monster hunting aspect. Though it would probably be necessary to create a whole big-ass array of new items that basically do nothing at all and expand the item inventory space

Either way, I dig the work you're doing it's pretty sick!

Last thing, I thought of something for the weapon and armor inventories. It would be a good QOL thing if the names of the equipment that the character can't use were drawn in a darker color like most of the later games do. That way the players don't get the annoyance of trying to equip gear that can't be equipped.

[Lasciel]

OK, this is going to sound pretty stupid, but how do I apply this to a FF1 ROM, and to which version do I apply it? The NES version, or the GBA Dawn of Souls version?

[Mari42]

OK, this is going to sound pretty stupid, but how do I apply this to a FF1 ROM, and to which version do I apply it? The NES version, or the GBA Dawn of Souls version?

FF1 NES version