ASM Tasks

Coders! Thank goodness you're here! We have a lot to do to make the Full Roster Hack a reality! Since we are adding 2 new full-fledged characters, there are quite a few bells and whistles invloved to get this working. In this topic, I need coders to point out any obstacle we could have in getting our new party members up and running, as well as sign up for, and submit resolutions to said problems. Here's a handful of things that need consideration:

• OAM Data! (Shops and Save menus) - m06
  
• Equipment - Madsiur/HatZen
  
• Magic lists - B-Run
  
• Colosseum functionality
  
• Properties relocation - Madsiur
  
• Sprite expansion - Madsiur
  
• Portrait expansion - Madsiur
  
• Command/Attack expansion - B-Run
  
• Adding actor names to Dialog commands - Madsiur
  
• Probably other things.
  
  

My recent MMMMMagic update is a potential answer for the magic list problem, which comes at the cost of learning magic from equipment, and whether or not we do that might depend on how the community decides to build the 15th and 16th characters, if we only need 1 more magic list, then we can get away with treasure relocation for a 13th standard list. Either way, magic should be more-or-less covered.

Similarly, getting equipment working should be an extremely quick task and should be as simple as relocating the "Spec active when Imp" and "Heavy gear" bits, then making sure our new character slots get assigned those equipment bits. Which leads me to expansion...

.8..We have plenty of room for putting our characters in the properties IDs in the game, however it might be wise to make them officially IDs $0E and $0F and shifting off less important characters, then updating the instances they are used in vanilla.

Sprite and portrait expansion is even more straightforward and can just be tacked on after relocating the overworld and battle pointer lists... we just need someone (or someones) to get it done.

Colosseum functionality may or may not be an issue. I don't know much about it, and I really don't feel like learning. So somebody take the reigns here once we decide on where to put our characters' property information.

Commands are where things start to get hairy. Making new commands will come down to expanding or reusing code. This will likely be a HEAVY edit, but nothing we can't overcome. Attacks might be a little bit harder and involve either expanding the attack list, OR hardcoding every ability and animation setup, which will likely be tedious, but doable.

OAM is the big-ticket item. We need to track down how the image that the OAM data references is built. OAM calling is going to need to either be dynamic, or we need to find a way to make some of the current data unneeded so to make room to weasel our characters in. There will also need to be some sprite-shifting in the shop menu to make room for 2 new people.

As much as I am inclined just to do all of this myself, I (just like others here) have a personal project to attend to, as well as coordination duties here. I am happy to help out and discuss possibilities for any of the topics here, but my time coding for this may be limited. I would love for some of you very, very talented people to step up. This is a community project on all-fronts, especially when it comes to ASM work!

So speak up! Tell me what you're inclined to work on, and what you'd be willing to do if i bugged you enough (I'm very persuasive). Also bring up any other topics we may need to consider and keep an eye on the list, I will be marking who is working on what. Feel free to poke me here or on discord with any questions or comments.

Happy Hacking!