[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

Certain Final Fantasy games - like FFV - have an 'optimal' or 'optimum' setting where the items with the highest offense (for weapons) and highest defense (for shields/armor/accessories) are equipped with a single button.  (I know that, in practice, this is just a quick way to have characters equip something in all relevant slots since what is truly optimal is context-sensitive.)

However, having experienced this in FFV, I'd like to know how feasible this would be for FFIII (NES), especially when changing jobs, and have it be toggleable, if only via IPS patches.  (In short, I'd like FFV-like behavior when equipping characters and changing their jobs.)

Having little experience with hacking console games, I'd like expert opinions on this.

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

FFIII NES has gotten a lot better over the last 2 decades due to mods.  However, the FFV spell system still beats it in terms of convenience for how spell learning and use works.

In FFV, once the party learns a spell (like Fire or Cure), everyone in the party knows it permanently.  (Each party member can only cast it if they otherwise meet all prerequisites, such as being the right class, having enough levels, having enough MP, and being alive but not silenced.)

In FFIII NES, each character normally needs to learn a separate spell copy, but can only have 3 total spells per spell level active at a time.  Thus, finding a Cure2 spell means that only one character can have it equipped at a time, even if that character can't cast that spell such as due to class or level.

What I propose - and this requires a feasibility check for implementation - is that spells (Aero, Mini, Toad, etc.) are kept on a separate inventory screen and sorted by type - Black, Summon, White, etc. - and each character picks spells from that screen to learn based on spells found.  For example, if the party found the Cure2 spell, anyone could prepare that spell (that is, put it in a spell slot of that spell level) and cast it as normal, instead of needing to find 4 copies and handle spells as if they were items, competing with the inventory space best left for weapons, armor, and consumables.

In this model, spells would not be sellable to vendors nor trashable, but held onto forever in inventory.  However, due to likely technical limitations of the 3 spell slots per spell level setup, players would still need to swap in whatever spells they wanted active.  (If these limitations were altered, then the number of spells of each spell level each character could prepare would be the new limit of this mod.)  In general, my preference is to make spell preparation as easy as changing classes (and having access to all spells castable by that new class), thereby coming as close as possible to FFV.

Thankee!

[KingMike]

You know ASM?
Because if the game doesn't have this function already programmed, you'd probably have to write it.

Should probably just have one thread for all of these.

[Endarire]

At present, I don't know ASM in a way conducive enough yet to accomplishing these.

[Bregalad]

You know ASM?
Because if the game doesn't have this function already programmed, you'd probably have to write it.

Should probably just have one thread for all of these.

Not only that, but FF3 has something like 10 unused bytes in the entire ROM, which certainly doesn't help - if you want to add a feature you have to remove another feature at least as big.

[Jiggers]

I would (try to) do it if there were a disassembly to work with. I haven't gotten to figuring out how to make them yet, but I did just make a similar magic learning screen for FF1.

Chaos Rush's translation uses an MMC5 mapper patch by Kea that expands the ROM size, so that would be your best bet for making big changes.