Final Fantasy II Restored

[abw]

What, other than Wall, have you tested so far that we can cross it off our bug list?

At this point I think I've got everything except Tsunami and friends tested. I'll update the patch once I've got those tested. I was having second thoughts about whether the current behaviour of Haste/Slow was really a bug or not, but I think I'm going to stick with 0 net successes not negating the opposing spell's effect. I also noticed a few more bugs:

• Casting Basuna on a target with only the Critical HP ailment results in displaying the message for Fear. (This is a consequence of the other bug where Basuna mistakenly clears the Critical HP flag.)
• If Esuna/Basuna fail to clear the highest present ailment, they display the Ineffective message even if they did clear other ailments.
• Sap does not reduce target's MP with 0 successes but still displays its success message.

It's not exactly a bug, but I also converted the code for displaying the message for the highest-cured Ailment into a loop, so Esuna/Basuna now display messages for each Ailment they cured.

Should I revert the reversal of messages for Dispel and Barrier on my ChaosRush translation, then, if you've fixed the code to make it play nice with current translations?

Yup, there's no need to re-order the strings anymore, so those can be reverted. While you're there, though, Chaos Rush's battle message for curing Amnesia is just "Cured of", which is not particularly helpful. Maybe we could use something like "Memory returned" instead?

It also occurs to me that while the actual behavior of Ultima in remakes is still an enigma, there's some fairly easy math that could be used to make the final spell fairly balanced. 1 point of guaranteed damage per level in a skill. Consider 16 spells (Ultima included) and 8 weapon types, all with 16 levels. That's 24 x 16 = 384. Make the base damage of Ultima something like 100 (or 116 for the sake of nice round numbers), and you end up with 500 damage per hit, with 16 hits on a Level 16 Ultima giving ~8000 damage. Might be an easier scaling spell that way rather than having it do obscene damage and then forcing a 9999 cap.

On the other hand, unless you've hacked your skill levels, massively abused the target/cancel bug, or spent probably hundreds of hours grinding, how high are your endgame skill levels realistically going to be?

[redmagejoe]

Updated first post, will try to help with testing everything in the spell package when work settles down, and I will try to fix the Amnesia message in the Chaos translation.

[abw]

Taking a closer look at Cyclone/Quake/Tsunami, it's a little hard to tell what the intended behaviour actually was. The original code

• calculates the number of hits as spell level + successes
• tries (but fails) to set the number of hits to 0 if the target is a member of a family included in the spell's data byte 3
• calculates the target's number of resist successes (but does nothing with them)
• calculates damage based on number of hits and spell power
• doubles the damage if the target is a member of a family included in the spell's data byte 4
• inflicts the damage

Since the spell's data byte 4 pretty obviously means families that are weak to the spell, I'm assuming byte 3 should mean families that resist the spell, but more on that in a moment. This code is unusual in that the target appears to be intended to resist the total number of hits, not just the successes, suggesting that full resistance should result in 0 hits, which logically and in agreement with physical attacks ought to mean a miss or 0 damage. However, because of the way the damage calculation loop works (LDY $hits/calculate damage for current hit and add to total damage/DEY/BNE @loop), calling it with 0 hits calculates 256 hits, resulting in extremely high (as in 2000 per target) damage, which is pretty much the opposite of what resistance should mean . On the other hand, only monsters have families and the party's only access to these spells is via 2 breakable items, so maybe being strong against some families and OP against others isn't a mistake? It would possibly make Earth Drums and Wind Flutes worth their inventory space.

So, we've got some choices here:

• we can leave these spells with their current unresistable behaviour
• we can let resistance work against the total number of hits instead of just successes, but fix it so that 0 hits gives full immunity (probably with the Ineffective message, but 0 damage would work too) instead of OP damage
• as above for normal spell resistance, but make the spell's data byte 3 mean OP damage against the corresponding family

In any case, families included in the spell's data byte 4 should still take double damage.

Thoughts?

[redmagejoe]

I can try to test them out in Anniversary. Quake comes from Gaia Drum, Cyclone comes from Wind Flute, and what gives Tsunami? Also, what families should resist what?

I'd like to try and make them behave as close to intended behavior as possible. The second one sounds like the most in-line with what the code was trying to do, just from how you've explained it.

[abw]

I can try to test them out in Anniversary. Quake comes from Gaia Drum, Cyclone comes from Wind Flute, and what gives Tsunami? Also, what families should resist what?

Wind Flute casts Cyclone 13, Earth Drum casts Quake 10, and the party has no access to Tsunami (except if you can confuse a monster that casts it, I guess).

Cyclone deals double damage to Magic Beast and ??? damage to Earth;
Quake deals double damage to Earth and ??? damage to Magic Beast;
Tsunami deals double damage to Aquatic and ??? damage to Magic Beast.

I'd like to try and make them behave as close to intended behavior as possible. The second one sounds like the most in-line with what the code was trying to do, just from how you've explained it.

Yeah, probably, although of the three options, the first one seems like the most in-line with the rest of the game. There is code for calculating unresistable amounts, but it's only used by healing spells, not attack spells. This would be the only set of spells where resist attempts are able to reduce hits from the spell level. No other damage spell is able to miss or inflict 0 damage, and 256 hits is just plain ridiculous. So, they're weird any way. They're also fairly uncommon, so it probably doesn't matter too much which way they're adjusted.

[redmagejoe]

I'll play around with it in Anniversary and get back to you.

EDIT: So I've noticed that "Magic Beasts" sometimes seem to be synonymous with "Flying" types. So Hornets and Queen Bees are considered whatever this family is. Quake 10 missed on all 5 of them in a group, while doing massive damage to Leg Eaters and Vampire Thorns, who are considered Earth. I will assume this to mean that Quake should be completely null against Flying/Magic Beasts/whatever that bit is on monster family. I will continue testing on the same enemy formation with Cyclone this time, but it seems clear to me that the behavior as intended is the ??? should be immunity. And indeed, Wind Flute missed 7 Leg Eaters / Vampire Thorns.

I think that settles it in terms of how we should fix it. Also, I really apologize that my contributions have slowed down. I feel guilty that it seems like you've tackled this huge part of the project while I'm trying to find time. The current crisis has complicated work, but I'm doing my best to clear my table, so to speak, so I can focus on this project once more. This project wouldn't even be possible without your awesome contributions, abw.

[abw]

So I've noticed that "Magic Beasts" sometimes seem to be synonymous with "Flying" types.

Yeah, I noticed that too, but it includes a decent number of non-fliers and some things that are also Earth family, so I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

I think that settles it in terms of how we should fix it.

Okay, spell data byte 3 now grants immunity to the corresponding family. For non-immune families, I've made the number of hits be calculated the same as other non-elemental damage spells, i.e. spell level + resistable successes, and have kept double damage to the families in spell data byte 4. I've uploaded the latest files; the spell fixes currently weigh in at 81 bytes shorter than the original!

Also, I really apologize that my contributions have slowed down. I feel guilty that it seems like you've tackled this huge part of the project while I'm trying to find time. The current crisis has complicated work, but I'm doing my best to clear my table, so to speak, so I can focus on this project once more. This project wouldn't even be possible without your awesome contributions, abw.

No worries - I've actually got more free time now that I don't have to commute back and forth every day, so that helps . I was already familiar with the spell code thanks to going through and documenting it, so the testing has actually taken longer than the coding .

[redmagejoe]

Bug Fix To-Do List:

• WIP Life only writes the low byte of HP to be restored on success, which may result in leaving the target dead due to 16-bit math error.
• WIP Sap only acts on the least significant byte rather than the whole of a target's MP. Investigate and correct.
• WIP Osmose drains MP even if the target has none. Needs to check source MP before awarding it.
• WIP Protect and Berserk bonus may overflow before being added to Defense or Attack, resulting in low or no effect.
• WIP Wall can be exploited by casting it on monsters to ensure that Toad, Break, Death, and Warp work on them. Wall's effects should likely be checked before any routines handling animation or other effects take place. Investigate.
• WIP Cyclone/Quake/Tsunami should be resisted by certain monster families, but the branching code checks the wrong processor flag (C instead of Z), which means family resistance is broken but that bug is cancelled out by another bug where after calculating the target's number of successful resists, the result is never used, which means resistance for these spells is just totally broken.
• WIP Imbibe decreases the target's evasion % by 1, but there is no check for underflow, so you could end up going from 0 to 255 % evasion; having 255 evasion probably breaks other logic elsewhere.
• WIP Basuna always clears the Critical HP flag
• WIP Basuna always cures Poison, even with 0 successes
• WIP Slow and Fear are slightly too powerful, only failing with negative net successes instead of also failing with 0 net successes
• WIP Fear calculates spell power * net successes, but does not check the high byte of the product
• WIP Status-curing items don't set the variable containing the target's previous ailments when calling the code for determining which battle message to display, resulting in an incorrect message being displayed (e.g. if you suffer from both Amnesia and Curse, curing Curse in battle with a Cross will display the message for curing Amnesia.

I'm assuming that these are all good to go and mark off our list?

[abw]

I'm assuming that these are all good to go and mark off our list?

Yes indeed, and these ones too:

• WIP Casting Basuna on a target with only the Critical HP ailment results in displaying the message for Fear. (This is a consequence of the other bug where Basuna mistakenly clears the Critical HP flag.)
• WIP If Esuna/Basuna fail to clear the highest present ailment, they display the Ineffective message even if they did clear other ailments.
• WIP Sap does not reduce target's MP with 0 successes but still displays its success message.

[redmagejoe]

It's so amazing to see the list trimmed down so much. I grew anxious when the list started growing that it would only grow faster than it shrunk. I can't wait to get the beta patch distributed for playtesting before long. Do you think once we've finished all the bug fixes (which will be a separate patch made first and asked to have playtesting done on it), and need to start making space for enhancements, it would be of benefit to make a new disASM of that version? Just trying to think down the road, but I should probably try to focus on what's right in front of us.

EDIT: Did some quick testing and found a crash that results from, after some narrowing down work, pairing the Spell Handlers Rewrite with the Weapons Effect Fix. It only seems to occur when I have Maria cast Berserk. I'm assuming this is due to the fact that the Weapons Effect fix addresses Berserk (Yoichi's Bow), but it's using the pre-rewrite pointers? If my speculation is correct, I'm sure that Drain's new address will need to be taken into consideration as well, since I believe those were the only 2 spell handlers from weapons that were touched.

[abw]

Presumably that'll be caused by the call to $BF9A in the weapon special effects patch, since $BF9A is now a bunch of 00 in the spell handlers rewrite patch . Since I've got the ASM files for both patches, gluing them together is easy (another reason why coding in text files is better than direct hex editing!); I only ran a quick test, but this ought to fix the problem.

[redmagejoe]

Awesome. Is this a rewritten Weapons Effects + Spell Handlers Rewrite, or a stopgap? Obviously we're going to bundle everything together eventually so it doesn't matter too much, but I want to make sure I've got load order taken into account. In other words, does that IPS replace both Spell Handlers and Weapon Effects?

[abw]

That's a replacement for both patches. I guess you could call it a rewrite, but really all I did was copy the Weapon Special Effects ASM, switch the syntax from Asar to ca65, and then paste it into the full assembly containing the Spell Handlers Rewrite changes.

I've updated the Weapons Effects + Spell Handlers Rewrite patch (same link as above) to include the rest of the previous bugfixes, merging them all together into a single patch that should be compatible with the Chaos Rush translation patch. I've also included fixes for the following:

• The logic for determining whether a monster will run or not calculates (total party HP - total monster HP) >> 5, but then ignores the high byte of the result and the possible carry from adding the monster's fear level.

As a consequence of the fear calculation fix, monsters are now probably running too often; a party with a total of around 6500 HP is quite capable of scaring away single monsters in the final room of the game.

• Combat engine gives credit for actions from both player characters and enemies before they've happened. Causes party to receive Magic Defense and Evasion credit even if the enemy is killed before it acts. Change counter increment behavior to happen after actions take place. May require significant rewriting of combat routine. Target/cancel exploit should be addressed through a solution.

By the time commands are executed, there doesn't appear to be anything left in RAM to indicate whether the command came from a spell or an item, so as a consequence only giving credit to commands that actually execute, items that cast spells will give credit for casting those spells, but only if the character already knows the spell being cast. I think I'm okay with that, as a mage gaining experience with a spell by observing an item that casts that spell still sounds reasonably logical.

In other news, I came across some more bugs:

• If a character is killed before their turn happens, their battle command and target are not cleared, which means that if the character gets revived before their turn comes up (even in a later round!), they will still try to execute their battle command.
• Monsters that are killed by poison/venom have their current HP set to 0 and KO Ailment bit set, but are not actually removed from battle; they remain valid targets (you can even cast Life on them to bring them back!) and need to attacked again in order to remove them from battle.
• When Leon rejoins, his starting stats don't match his calculated stats; the first time his stats are recalculated, he loses 8 primary hand damage, gains 1% primary hand accuracy, gains 10 secondary hand damage, loses 7% secondary hand accuracy, and loses 15% evasion.

And here's another formatting error in the Chaos Rush translation: when meeting up with Leon in Palamecia, the last letter of Maria's first line of dialogue ("Stop! Both of you! Why") gets chopped off ("Stop! Both of you! Wh") if her name is 6 characters long.

Thinking a little more about the running total of HP/MP loss, out-of-battle MP use should be included too.

[redmagejoe]

Other than merging all our current fixes, was anything else changed, or any addresses moved around? I think I was trying to avoid merging everything until towards the end when it was clear we wouldn't need to move too much any more, but I guess we're getting close to that point. Also I knew about that dead character battle command thing early on, and yet somehow I neglected to mention it or add it to the list this entire time... No idea how the hell I let that happen.

I'll go ahead and update the first post to start using the combined patch and rename it simply to "Final Fantasy Restored (Bug Fixes Only) Beta" since that seems like the path we're taking this close to the finish line. I'll also add those bugs to the list. If possible it would be nice if we could fine-tune the fleeing of enemies if it is, indeed, too frequent compared to usual.

And did you actually manage to fix the target cancel exploit? I'm genuinely curious what approach you took to make that happen. Comparing our versions side by side and I see some places where I did some pretty rough fixes early on that it looks like you improved on, though the entire 0x1687A to 0x16A4B block looks like it's been significantly redone so I couldn't follow what all changed there.

At 0x16C51, there's 3 $05 which if I recall were the chance to lose stats that needed to be changed to $0B for the RNG change. Does that still hold or did you find a way to redo the RNG that can use the original values? Wow, there's a lot of mess in some of my early work I'm seeing now side-by-side, like leftover bytes and such.

I'll make a note to fix that issue in the Chaos Rush translation in short order.

[abw]

Other than merging all our current fixes, was anything else changed, or any addresses moved around? I think I was trying to avoid merging everything until towards the end when it was clear we wouldn't need to move too much any more, but I guess we're getting close to that point.

Oh, plenty of stuff got moved around - trying to maintain the original addresses of every pointer target was just too annoying. That said, there are about 90 new NOPs scattered throughout the rewritten code in order to keep certain things at the addresses expected by the Chaos Rush translation patch.

Also I knew about that dead character battle command thing early on, and yet somehow I neglected to mention it or add it to the list this entire time... No idea how the hell I let that happen.

I'll go ahead and update the first post to start using the combined patch and rename it simply to "Final Fantasy Restored (Bug Fixes Only) Beta" since that seems like the path we're taking this close to the finish line. I'll also add those bugs to the list. If possible it would be nice if we could fine-tune the fleeing of enemies if it is, indeed, too frequent compared to usual.

Yeah, that'll require some more play-testing to find the right balance. The funny part about scaring endgame monsters away is that the monsters aren't wrong: by that point, most lone monsters can easily be killed in less than a round, very possibly before they have a chance to act .

And did you actually manage to fix the target cancel exploit? I'm genuinely curious what approach you took to make that happen. Comparing our versions side by side and I see some places where I did some pretty rough fixes early on that it looks like you improved on, though the entire 0x1687A to 0x16A4B block looks like it's been significantly redone so I couldn't follow what all changed there.

Yes, although after some further investigation, it looks like there are some variables still set that are related to determining whether a used item is consumed or not, so we could use those to distinguish between spells cast from the Item command and spells cast from the Magic command. However, that led to the discovery of another bug:

- There is an approximately 1% chance (1/256 with the original unbalanced RNG) for "non-breakable" items to be destroyed anyway when used in battle. It sure sucks to lose the Masmune that way

As for the fix itself, it was basically just moving the counter increments from the code for entering commands to the code for executing commands, with a little bit of extra work to reconstruct some information that was no longer as easily accessible during command execution, such as which of the current character's spell slots needed to have its use counter incremented.

At 0x16C51, there's 3 $05 which if I recall were the chance to lose stats that needed to be changed to $0B for the RNG change. Does that still hold or did you find a way to redo the RNG that can use the original values? Wow, there's a lot of mess in some of my early work I'm seeing now side-by-side, like leftover bytes and such.

I left those as $05 for the time being on the assumption that the 1/6 chance to lose a stat was the original intent; changing it to 1/12 to match the actual behaviour is easy enough, but that might be more suited to a rebalance patch than a strictly bugfix patch. On that note, how strongly do you feel that equipment stat bonuses not stacking is actually a bug?

[redmagejoe]

On that note, how strongly do you feel that equipment stat bonuses not stacking is actually a bug?

I'm using the Anniversary version as a basis to say that it was a bug.



I've got a bit more time to focus on this project at the moment, so I'm going to start looking at the following for now since it seems like it should be a relatively easy fix.

• Stat refresh needed after Mysidian Tower Orbs

[abw]

I'm using the Anniversary version as a basis to say that it was a bug.

Alright, we'll leave it in then. On the subject of bugs, I've updated the item breaking code in the bug fix patch to ensure that items with a 0% chance to break actually won't break. However, I also noticed another couple of bugs:

• In addition to not being notified about your party surprising the enemy party until after you've entered commands (and knowing you have a free turn could definitely influence your command choices), it looks like the game still runs through the enemy AI, which in the original game results in your party gaining credit for being attacked even though the monsters didn't actually do anything.
• When viewing the party's inventory during NPC interactions, attempting to scroll 1 row up from the bottom page scrolls an entire page up.

• Investigate possibility of issue in event of >20 battle messages in queue.

On the plus side, I think we can cross this one off the list - battle messages can only overflow at the end of a battle, and $7FCE-$7FDD are used for tracking item use during battle, so overwriting them at the end of a battle is fine.

I've also updated the assembly with more commentary; of particular interest to the bug list are:

As stated, I'm settling with just removing the space in the Chaos Rush version for now, as I really don't want to redo the spell name character graphics, and I don't want to mess with window borders either.

Yup, that's fine. I'm just saying that based on other games I've looked at, we might get lucky and be able to expand the width of the spell name window by changing a single byte somewhere.

The position/size of the 5 battle message windows are set at $05:$AC02-$05:$AC1F, but the game determines the interior width separately; for the right two message windows (hits/spell level and damage), look for all the LDA #$07 scattered across the various cases between $0C:$A9F7 and $0C:$AA79.

• Certain key items take up valuable inventory slots long after they are relevant to the game or story, when they should be consumed within the context of the story. There is no way to dispose of them. Consider implementing an item delete of Goddess's Bell once it is used to open Kashuan Keep, the Pass after you use it to gain access to the landed Dreadnought, the Egil's Torch after acquiring Sunfire OR after Sunfire is thrown into the Dreadnought's core, and of course the Sunfire after the same event, White Mask after it is placed upon the Goddess Statue, Black Mask after it is placed upon the Doppelganger, and Pendant after it is used to summon the Wyvern, or after Elina and her son vanish from Deist if there's some interaction they use. Investigate if any of these items still have any even mundane interactions with NPCs, as beyond these points they no longer are crucial to game progression. This will free up to 7 inventory slots of the 11 that key items take up, of your 32 total inventory slots.

$0E:$9381-$0E:$94DA is where using key items is handled; TXA / JSR $957C / LDA #$00 (or whatever item ID you want, e.g. #$08 if you want to replace Egil's Torch by Sunfire) / STA $6060,X in the appropriate sections should get rid of the used key item. Based on story events, Egil's Torch, Sunfire, and the two Masks should definitely not still be in your inventory after you use them, but it's not clear that you actually lose the Goddess's Bell, Pass, or Pendant after using them. The Pass is an interesting case: you don't need to acquire it in the first place or use it once you have it since you can instead choose to fight your way past the Captain to get access to the Dreadnought. I don't believe the Crystal Rod is actually required for anything after Ricard joins; it ought to be used to gain entry to the Tower, but on re-entries at least (still need to verify your initial entry) you can still walk in and out with the entry animation even if you don't have a Crystal Rod in your inventory.

[redmagejoe]

Awesome finds all around. I'll have to find some time to tamper with the Chaos Rush patch and try adjusting the window length by 1 to see if that remedies the issue. I've also updated the first post. When I get a chance, my main priorities will be the Mysidian Orbs refresh and the key items changes.

Well... clearly that wasn't what I was meant to do with those 4 LDA #$07s. I changed them to #$08, and the box itself didn't stretch, it just shifted the text over 1 space to the right, cutting off 1 more character than it was already.

Also, fun fact: Changing it to #$06 shift the first character up to the line above at the far right, so apparently the boxes are actually 2 character spaces tall. You could actually fit two whole lines in each box. I think actually changing the data that determines box size is the way to go, as the text seems to conform to the box.

Code Select Expand


; pointers to battle message window positioning data (width, height, top-left PPU address, bottom-left PPU address)
; indirect data load target (via $AA5A, $AA5E, $AB52, $AB56)
0x016C08|$05:$ABF8:02 AC ; $05:$AC02
0x016C0A|$05:$ABFA:08 AC ; $05:$AC08
0x016C0C|$05:$ABFC:0E AC ; $05:$AC0E
0x016C0E|$05:$ABFE:14 AC ; $05:$AC14
0x016C10|$05:$AC00:1A AC ; $05:$AC1A
; indirect data load target (via $ABF8)
0x016C12|$05:$AC02:0A 04 60 22 C0 22
; indirect data load target (via $ABFA)
0x016C18|$05:$AC08:0A 04 C0 22 20 23
; indirect data load target (via $ABFC)
0x016C1E|$05:$AC0E:09 04 69 22 C9 22
; indirect data load target (via $ABFE)
0x016C24|$05:$AC14:09 04 C9 22 29 23
; indirect data load target (via $AC00)
0x016C2A|$05:$AC1A:12 04 20 23 80 23


Sure enough that did the trick. Changing the 09s to 0As makes the box one character width longer. That said, now I DO have to change those LDA 07s to 08s, so it will start on the first space of the "second" line. The only thing about this solution that bugs me is that it covers up the first digit of character HP >999 for the moment it's up, whereas before it was all perfectly formatted to show all the pertinent data... So I'm left once more with the choice between leaving it with the number crammed against the 5th character in the case of 5-character spell names, or always covering up the HP digit regardless the situation. Hmm...

I'm kind of leaning towards the current fix, though it would be nice without shoving an extra space in every 4-character spell name to have the spell level not crammed against the name like is necessary for the 5-character spell names. Anyway, I fixed the message you mentioned by simply starting the "Why" on the next line with the rest of the sentence and some clever DTE usage. It also looks like Chaos Rush didn't quite run his changed banks through CastleFynn enough times. Careful not to upset any of the changes that required putting one or two entries in another bank (Beelzbub and Astaroth had to be stuck at the end of the Battle Messages bank due to the extra 15 bytes needed), and with the very minute typo corrections and changes to text, I was able to shave only 3 bytes off the HUGE bank 1 (amazing that it was so few considering this is where most of the game's story script is), but 75 bytes off the battle messages bank. That will be helpful if/when I need space at the end of this project.

3 freed bytes in Bank 1
6 freed bytes in Bank 2
9 freed bytes in Bank 3
75 freed bytes in Battle Messages
13 freed bytes in Misc 1, passed on to Misc 2 due to banks being consecutive
96 freed bytes in Misc 2, not including 13 inherited from Misc 1
3 freed bytes in Enemy Names
4 freed bytes in Attacks

Reminder that these only apply to the ChaosRush translation and not our current WIP project.



v2.0 of ChaosRush Translation has been submitted to the queue and will hopefully be up in the next day or two.

[abw]

Well... clearly that wasn't what I was meant to do with those 4 LDA #$07s. I changed them to #$08, and the box itself didn't stretch, it just shifted the text over 1 space to the right, cutting off 1 more character than it was already.

Yeah, it's a little annoying that the window drawing code and the text layout code don't talk to each other - the game lays text out in the nametable buffer at $7600 before reading the window dimensions, so it takes twice as much work to resize windows . The interior space is definitely 2 tiles high, though; in Japanese, the first row is used for diacritics and the second row for base characters.

The only thing about this solution that bugs me is that it covers up the first digit of character HP >999 for the moment it's up, whereas before it was all perfectly formatted to show all the pertinent data... So I'm left once more with the choice between leaving it with the number crammed against the 5th character in the case of 5-character spell names, or always covering up the HP digit regardless the situation. Hmm...

Some further food for thought:

• Seeing HP is definitely nice, but it's not like you can actually do anything about it during a round, and it will still be visible between actions;
• Damage amounts > 999 lose the "DMG" text and only display the damage amount (this is a bug in the J ROM too);
• Bigger windows allow for longer text; it would take further work (mostly on the in-battle spell selection UI), but you could have e.g. 8-letter spell names and 18-letter monster names, which would basically eliminate all of the current abbreviations.

Trimming 200+ bytes from the script, huh? That's always nice .

[redmagejoe]

Eh, I opted to leave it the "easy" fix way, for consistency with the aesthetics. Honestly it's more of a nitpick to see "Cure16" instead of "Cure 16", and it seems in line with the style of NES RPGs of the time. If I obsess too much about it looking "pretty" over how it fits into the conventions of the time, I'd just end up on a slippery slope that would see me spending a lot of effort on completely overhauling the interface, which I'm not willing to set out to do.

Besides, calling it a day on that allows me to put the Chaos Rush project behind me and focus all my energy when I'm not working on this project of ours.

Chaos Rush Translation v2.0 is up!
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/2656/



As you can imagine, work has kept me away from this project for a bit, but I'm looking forward to get back into things soon. I updated the first post, as I can't recall why I hadn't removed the WIP from the combat counter / target cancel exploit fix. I'm assuming that all behaviors relating to counters and enemy/party targetting is working properly in your bug fix patch so far? Also in case I failed to mention, I've got the first post pointing to the link for your bug fix IPS, abw, since it seems like you have a better handle on the compilation now than I do. I will continue to test out patches and submit them to you as I find solutions to the items remaining on our list.