[Jiggers]

I was thinking Agility, then looked up how much Agility each class actually earns per level, and the Fighter earns more than the Thief...

In 49 level-ups, each class earns:
Fighter: 35 agility, 24 luck
Thief: 32 agility, 49 luck
BlackBelt: 25 agility, 30 luck
RedMage: 17 agility, 25 luck
WhiteMage: 18 agility, 20 luck
BlackMage: 13 agility, 14 luck

So it really does feel like a speed stat more than agility. Thief is fast, BB second fastest, Red Mage a teensy bit faster but limited to lighter swords...

But the point of my project is that anyone who wants to change stuff can do so easier! If you want agility instead of luck, that's changing one line. If you want to fiddle with the level up data, its organized so you just have to change a few 1s and 0s.

But you're right about the hide thing, I disabled that for now. Code's still in there if people want to enable it, though. I just wrote the hiding-when-critical code, but its also disabled until I have time to test it.

Working out the kinks for 3 save slots now. Looootta bugs going on due to the RAM switching. Loading and saving screens are working though, except for displaying which sprites each save game is using. It's a monsterous mess...
January 17, 2019, 11:51:13 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)I did it. I don't really know how I did it, but I did it. It's super messy... but... I DID IT.

There are now 3 save slots. Saving on the overworld works. Saving in inns works. You can load from the title screen. You can cancel saving and cancel loading and everything should be fine.

The MMC5's exRAM ($5C00) is now the base game data, where the current game draws from. That way its not wiped out when swapping RAM.

But please stress test the heck out of it!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1G699Vc47Qr5he4zcBEi2JPTdc0a9h14n

[Orochi Kusanagi]

Wow, the amount of changes done on this has been nothing short of astounding. I love that these classics still get so much love from the fans.

[Vanya]

Since you mentioned making things easy for other to make changes, how about adding commands?
Or having interchangeable commands?
One of my dreams has been to add class specific commands to help spice things up.

I'd also like to try to add a new screen for changing jobs like in the later games, but that's a whole other can of worms I'm ill prepared to even think about.

[Jiggers]

Wow, the amount of changes done on this has been nothing short of astounding. I love that these classics still get so much love from the fans.

Thanks :D

Since you mentioned making things easy for other to make changes, how about adding commands?
Or having interchangeable commands?
One of my dreams has been to add class specific commands to help spice things up.

I'd also like to try to add a new screen for changing jobs like in the later games, but that's a whole other can of worms I'm ill prepared to even think about.

There's still 14 more banks to work with... I think? Both these things are ideas I wanted to do eventually. The Hide command came from trying to do class-specific things. I was having trouble changing the text when a new character's turn comes up. But I think I can do that now.

At the moment I think I reached the limit of what I can just "patch in", though. Further changes are going to require massively cleaning up the battle code at least. There's either 1 bit left in the battle command byte for a different action, or the hide command took it up.

I also want to clean up how in-battle and out-of-battle stats are loaded and used, how magic is stored out-of-battle, and clean up what bits of RAM are used for things, so its easier to tell what's safe to use and when.

Aaand I need to comment all my code better, and I think I'll stop keeping the original code commented out once a change I make works 100%. Its getting very messy to read. So for the next few weeks, that will probably be my focus. Along with minor bug fixes as I run into them. One slightly big "bug" is that the 4 big enemies have a gap between them, which pushes them too close to the heroes. That's going to require some nametable editing--or if that's impossible, I have to change the cool spell movement animation I made. :(

[Vanya]

Ah, the dreaded commenting.
My work in Game Maker Studio sometimes feels slower than molasses because I'm always commenting everything so thoroughly.

Having to rewrite some of the code was probably inevitable given how the original code is kinda ... sloppy.
If you've read Anomie's bugfix and enhancement notes, you know how many issues there are.

Good luck, though!
If I can make some time to contribute, I'll try to do so.

[Jiggers]

I tackled the dialogue data today. Only 256 lines in the game! Didn't know that. Should have expected it. Gotta figure out how to double that at least. Really hope I didn't screw up a pointer.

There was a game-freezing bug where the magic menu was looking at "$6300" instead of "ch_magicdata"--which used to be the same thing, but aren't anymore.

So I went through and looked for every place there was a variable that wasn't in variables.inc. Mostly they were in battle code. There's like, 8 different places they just chose at random to use as loop counters and temporary backup spots. So about 60% of the way through I just gave up labeling things very well because I was making new variable labels for the same damn thing. So a few spots it'll be saving to like, "math_basedamage" and it has nothing to do with damage at all.  I'll get around to that eventually...

Also updated the Checksum verification so now it tries to check the right spots for each save slot, instead of just the first one.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SQn4b5UpQcAA7HXzkRCTJ0Ls4RzsnLB6 - So here's a new upload. Rather than overwrite the old upload with every new change, which may or may not break everything, I'll start updating this one instead. Version... 0.2 or something. I should learn how to do project updates maybe.

If anyone is actually trying to play the game with this, please let me know when something looks way off.

[POWCo-op]

Great work Jiggers. Thanks for that.

[Jiggers]

Welcome!

Version 0.21 - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SQn4b5UpQcAA7HXzkRCTJ0Ls4RzsnLB6

EDIT: False alarm, some bugs are still there. Working on it! Sorry!

Bugs Remaining:
* Sound Test screen plays weird stuff if you try to play a song twice.
* Being killed and poisoned in one hit will leave the dead character with the poisoned icon instead of the broken heart icon. Same for other ailments I assume.
* There's a small pause when enemies strike first; where players should be acting, but it skips over them. Not really a bug, but something I want to clear up soon.


Bugs Fixed: (thanks Mari42 for bringing some of these to my attention!)
* Save music was supposed to stop playing when leaving the save screen. Now it does!
* Treasure chests weren't displaying items because the dialogue box didn't know that item names and dialogue strings are in different banks. Now it does!
* I forgot to fix shop inventories after making consumables use different item IDs. This also stopped Heals and Pures displaying in the Drink menu in battle. Now they do!
* The highest byte of item prices when trying to purchase wasn't getting set to 0, making it impossible to buy things after a battle (my battle turn order list writes to the same spot). Fixed it. Edit: And DOUBLE fixed it because it wasn't updating in the right spot to be useful.
* Item prices were being loaded weirdly (shifted one way, then shifted the other to add in the carry), and it was breaking things. Fixed that by loading it normally and adding 0 without clearing the carry first? I'm not sure why it broke. Very weird.
* Fixed the after-battle party sorting so dead characters actually get shoved to the back row.
* More spell spelling fixes. Lokk 2 = Lock 2, Foice = Voice, Qauke = Quake... Holy and Wall were mixed up, as were Flare and Stop. Dumb things like that. Could still be some errors around.
Edit: * Treasure chests should now open the right items. Instead of a Canoe and a Fire Orb, you get a Cabin and a Heal! As you should.

Changes Made:
* Out of Battle Poison is now $04 instead of $03. This basically means all the OB/IB stuff Bank B does is stupid and pointless except for changing the character levels from 0-based to 1-based... So I took all that out and the levels are changed in like 12 bytes or something small like that.

* Character spells are now stored in 8 bytes with the rest of their data. Current and Max MP share a byte (current is high bits, max is low bits.) It took a lot of code, but to free up $100 of RAM in each save game, I think its worth it. The only trade off is that you can't really sort your spells in order of which you purchased first. However, with some tweaks to the numbers, (and a heck of a lot of menu and display changes, not to mention how battle selection grabs spells...) you could learn all 64 spells on a character--still in those 8 bytes. I'm very proud of this!!

* All character stat bytes are used up now. Weapons and armour take up 8 each. Spells and MP are 8 each. If more stats are needed I'll have to move Hiding out of there or something.

* There is now 256 bytes of unused space in each save game slot. Could be double game flag data! More treasure chests! More NPC triggers! Whatever game flags are used for!

Edit: * Bank 0 now exists as an editable ASM file. Had to quickly organize that and find the treasure data to fix the item bytes. Thanks to http://finalfantasyrandomizer.com/ for having a list of treasure stuff I could quickly refer to, and ... anomie, I think? For already having broken down the data structure of that bank! I kinda just copied their notes on it, sorry... Was a rush job!


Please look for potential bugs anywhere where magic is concerned! I haven't yet tested leveling up granting MP. All battle spells should be doing what they're supposed to do.

The next things I want to work on (after a week or two break) is updating weapons and armour screens. This will be a big one, too. Each character can have double the equipment, so each character will get their own screen. I'll play around with it and see how that comes out after my break.

[Vanya]

Cool stuff, man.

About the character equipment...
Before I got to the end of your post I was thinking about that already since you mentioned the changes to item IDs.
Is it feasible to merge the item and equipment functions in the game like later games do?
I always found it tedious having them separate and it sucks having to have 2 commands for using different kinds of items.
I imaging it would require some significant rewriting of the item screen and the associated commands.
Is my supposition correct?

[Jiggers]

I'm not sure if its feasible or not, yet. Both ideas will require learning how to scroll item windows, either in shops or... in shops AND the item list in the menu. What I'd love to do is have an equipment list seperate from items, and an equip character screen for each character. Then select what item from the list you want them to equip from the slot you choose. So that way a character only has 6 bytes of equipment data, and if its full, its ALWAYS equipped, while the equipment bag takes up some of the unused item list bytes.

Version 0.22 - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SQn4b5UpQcAA7HXzkRCTJ0Ls4RzsnLB6

Changes:
* Character sprite and class are the same byte again--but low and high bits. So each time the game needs to get the class data it has to AND #$0F to clear the sprite bits out, or AND #$F0 to clear the class bits out for sprite use.
* Same thing for the hiding byte; the high bits are hiding, and the low bits... aren't used yet, but I want to code in a regeneration spell. So a character will be healed between turns, then it ticks down by 1, and stops at 0. So the Battle Turn number has a good reason for being there (counting how long until regen spells fade.)
* The EXP-to-Next bytes are unused now. The game calculates this every time you go to look at the status screen.
* Treasure chests not containing key items should be silent now... not sure about key item ones yet.

Bugs Fixed:
* Pressing right in the options menu would set a variable to 1. This variable is also used to tell shops to display a price... So if you used the options menu, then went to buy something, the shop would ask, "____g okay?" And possibly also mess up what you buy. Anyway, now the options menu clears its variables on exit.
* Forgot to set my Y loop counter to 0 when magic shops check the 3 slots per level, so it was only letting you learn 2 level 2 spells and I think 1 level 3 spell. Should now let you learn 3 spells per level as intended!

Bugs:
* Selling stuff is wonky. Gives too much money. Edit: Fixed. - Edit: Not fixed. Need to re-write a whole bunch of code. Taking out the equipment sorting routine really breaks a lot of stuff--but the routine itself was broken somehow... I don't want to deal with it. If you want to sell things for now, put them in the first slot.
* The other bugs I know of are still there...

I never really got that break I was looking forward to. Its always just, "Oh, this one last idea should be easy..." Then I swap stat bytes around and forget to change another thing and then think the first thing I changed is broken but its FINE and the fact that its fine drives me crazy because if its fine why is it bugging out so much and then I realize I forgot to change one tiny part. That's coding for ya.

[Vanya]

... and then I realize I forgot to change one tiny part. That's coding for ya.

Ha! It sure is. I once spent a week rewriting an entire script in a GameMaker project thinking I had terribly messed it up somehow only to sleep on it and come back to it the next day and realize I had only forgotten to update a constant in another part of the game.

I had a Japanese FF hack a while back that did the separate equip screen per character thing.
Can't remember where I got it. Or if it could be of any help.

EDIT:
Found it. It's called Final Fantasy Revised.
It seems what they did was restructure the Weapon and Armor menus and add an extra mini inventory exclusively for equipment that all characters can access while in either of the equipment menus.
When you go to either equipment menu you choose a character like you do with the magic menu and only that character's stuff is shown.
Additionally, they added commands to the equipment menus so that you can directly switch between armor and weapons menus and swap to the next or previous character in the lineup.
It's kind of ingenious really.

[Mari42]

Ha! It sure is. I once spent a week rewriting an entire script in a GameMaker project thinking I had terribly messed it up somehow only to sleep on it and come back to it the next day and realize I had only forgotten to update a constant in another part of the game.

I had a Japanese FF hack a while back that did the separate equip screen per character thing.
Can't remember where I got it. Or if it could be of any help.

EDIT:
Found it. It's called Final Fantasy Revised.
It seems what they did was restructure the Weapon and Armor menus and add an extra mini inventory exclusively for equipment that all characters can access while in either of the equipment menus.
When you go to either equipment menu you choose a character like you do with the magic menu and only that character's stuff is shown.
Additionally, they added commands to the equipment menus so that you can directly switch between armor and weapons menus and swap to the next or previous character in the lineup.
It's kind of ingenious really.

You mean as in from PS1, Wonderswan, etc?

[Jiggers]

...and realize I had only forgotten to update a constant in another part of the game.

That was exactly the issue. I keep trying to organize the layout of character stats better, for easier reading in the memory viewer, and moved the hiding stat to $10 from $09, then shifted experience over to $09. Meanwhile the battle code was still clearing the hidden stat at the start of battle, so experience was getting reset... All because another variable I was using to point directly to the hidden stat... 

It seems what they did was restructure the Weapon and Armor menus and add an extra mini inventory exclusively for equipment that all characters can access while in either of the equipment menus.
When you go to either equipment menu you choose a character like you do with the magic menu and only that character's stuff is shown.

That's a lot like what I want to do, yeah. Except without switching armour and weapons. I think I can squeeze that in one screen and show the stats that update, too. Only show what they have equipped, but picking a slot opens the bag to choose what to try and wear.

I made a quick fix for selling weapons and armour (Link in previous post still). Instead of trying to match up the item box with character inventory, it just scans their inventory for the item you're selling, and if it finds a match, deletes it. So if you have 4 short swords and sell the 4th one, it will delete the 1st, equipped or not. I could add in a safety catch for selling equipped gear, but at the moment I'd rather focus on not burning myself out and, when I do get back to it, doing that whole upgraded weapon/armour inventory and shop update.

Also realized that something weird happened with the intro text and the fading-in sprites were offset by 4 and showing garbage characters... nooo idea how that happened, I haven't touched that code since it first worked... but I put in a fix for that, too.

And, just a reminder (to myself as well)... I don't consider what I'm doing to be updating FF1 anymore. Rather, I'm trying to make more sense of its code and expand on certain features, so that this disassembly can be used for other hacks. My ultimate goal is to make my own NES RPG. So at some point, things may start diverging wildly. I don't want to spend a lot of time doing something just to make this use features that other FF1 remakes use--unless those features are a sensible upgrade that would make other games better, too.

...that said, I have been working on a new song for boss battles...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ydVqBt_c8Tata1h4w-9C_8YsUhr_wXuM

(Its only midi square channels, so no triangle bass or duty settings or anything like that. Very rough draft.)

[Vanya]

You mean as in from PS1, Wonderswan, etc?

Sorta, yeah. But the equipment is still separated from the consumable items and quest items in their own inventory apart.

...that said, I have been working on a new song for boss battles...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ydVqBt_c8Tata1h4w-9C_8YsUhr_wXuM

(Its only midi square channels, so no triangle bass or duty settings or anything like that. Very rough draft.)

Huh. Nice work there so far. Interesting choice to base it off the temple theme.
I've always been partial to using the Dungeon theme as a boss theme in my custom playlists.
If I had any kind of musical talent I would have actually made it into a real boss theme in Famitracker a long time ago.

[Jiggers]

Thanks! There's some volcano and undersea shrine in there, too (and if you really want to stretch it, a brief reference to the original earth/marsh cave music.) I don't think Sky Castle would fit in at all though.

Meanwhile... the game is completely broken! Winning battles still doesn't award XP properly, and I have absolutely no idea why. Or, maybe XP is awarded properly, but the levelup routine is not granting the level when they reach the needed amount. I don't know when I'll get around to checking why and fixing it. I really just wanted to play for a while and not stare at the code for ten hours a day.

[Vanya]

First off, fantastic job on the new features so far, the options menu alone is beyond epic.
The selectable number of items to buy in the item shop is also great. As is the save menu and selectable character sprites.


Now on to issues I noticed...

Magic doesn't seem to be redirecting to a new target.
I only checked while using a red mage and casting Fire 1.

I noticed the experience values were wonky but you already know about that.


Suggestions for farther down the line that would benefit your future project and probably my own...

Being able to buy multiple items in the weapon and armor shops would be cool, though I imagine it would require having the items in a separate inventory for sure.

One thing I just realized would make shopping much simpler and less annoying is being able to open your party menu while you are in a shop.

And one idea that I had a while back was adding the ability to see at the very least whether or not a character can equip a given item.
I was thinking that perhaps the sprites used to display the party could change when you are pointing at a given item.
If they can equip it they change to the win pose.
If they can't equip it they change to the near death pose.
And if they already have it on they use the normal standing pose.
Alternatively, you have a plus, minus or equals sign appear over their heads instead.

I think that's it for now.

[Jiggers]

*flop* I fixed it. I fixed it all. I think.

Auto-target option now effect single-cast spells (on enemies, not on players.) I just never got around to poking that, but it was a super simple thing to do!

I fixed a bug where the black belt's fists were cyan. Because the code to give them a proper palette was only triggering if no weapon graphic was set (no weapon equipped I thought!), but the routine that figures out weapon stats sets the graphic to fists... So now it checks for fists and no weapon.

I was being dramatic in saying it was unplayably broken. The level up routine is working fine after all. And so is the EXP to Next display. In fact... code was perfect.

[22:13] Jiggers: when swapping banks from inside a bank... I thought it would be wise to backup the registers and some temp variables that are always being used. Just in case there's a situation where I needed to inject a bank switch and keep the bytes in those intact.
[22:13] Jiggers: But I never actually had to DO THAT
[22:14] Jiggers: Until this one thing, where... the only reason I need to do that is because my own backing up code WILL WIPE THOSE TEMPORARY VARIABLES CLEAR
[22:14] Jiggers: *cry*
[22:14] Jiggers: Anyway...
[22:14] Jiggers: LongCall_tmp    = $5CFB ; These backup tmp, tmp+1, and the A, X, and Y registers
LongCall_A      = $5CFD ; The LongCall routine restores them after it swaps banks
LongCall_Y      = $5CFE
LongCall_X      = $5CFF
[22:14] Jiggers: I fixed it
[22:15] Jiggers: LongCall_tmp was 5CFC and yet it was set to use +1 as well
[22:15] Jiggers: but that meant the accumulator was clearing out the high byte of tmp

... so I just decided to ditch the whole "backing up tmp and tmp+1 variables" idea. Right? They don't get wiped by the LongCall routine. I was just being super caurious and paranoid back then because I still barely knew how it all worked.

So experience gain is fine, and the status page shows it properly.

And I was trying to do a thing where Surprised attacks don't have a long pause, but just made it so enemies don't attack during their surprise attack turn. Fixed THAT, too. But the pause comes back if your characters die or are stoned or stunned or whatever. Not much I can do about it at the moment!

Version 0.23 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SQn4b5UpQcAA7HXzkRCTJ0Ls4RzsnLB6

As far as shops go, at this point, I'm just thinking I'll re-write the whole inventory system and shops from scratch, when I am able to spend a few weeks on that... I think I can think of a way to show what they can equip... but entering the menu from the shop might be a bit too much. There's just soo many little sub-menus that poll for A or B or up or down or left or right. Making every little menu also check for start... oof. ( . .) Sorry.

[Vanya]

Wait a minute, does that mean that the shops are actually a menu?

[Jiggers]

Menus within menus pretty much!

Buy/Sell/Exit - menu.
Selecting an item - menu.
Selecting who learns a spell/gets weapons or armour - menu.
Selecting yes/no - menu.
Everything in this game is menus! XD

I fiddled around with it. Every shop menu does call the same routine to re-draw the character sprites and keep music playing, so I put in a check for the start button to go into the menu. It worked... the problem is re-drawing the shop after. The list of items, the last message the shopkeeper says, whatever logic is going on prior to entering the menu... I can backup the main dialogue box, but the item lists and price being displayed in the dialogue box, all that would need to be backed up and re-drawn, and I'm really not sure how to do that. Its simpler to just re-enter the shop after going to the menu, but then at that point, is it really too annoying to leave and re-enter the shop manually? >.< And because of the other menu changes I did, the town music won't start up again after leaving the shop...

I'll keep that feature in mind for when I do get around to doing the shops over from scratch though.

[Vanya]

Ah, I see.

Yeah it's only a minor annoyance, so it's not that big a deal.

So I guess that is my better suggestion.
1) add an equipment indicator of some sort.
2) add an option to equip the item after selecting who will receive it.

Being able to see who can equip the currently selected item and whether putting on increases or decreases your stats would go a long way in not having to spend so much time swapping around equipment and leaving and entering the shops.

Combined with an equip now option and there will never be a need to leave the shop to check stats.

And because I can never leave well enough alone, if there was some way to directly display at least the basic stats of the currently selected equipment, that would be awesome and asking for way too much.

Regardless, thanks for all of your work so far.