blitz, swordtech, and other battle animations

Yes, they are in order; for instance animation 1 (in MDE, in usME it's "index 0") for the spell Ice would be that bouncing line that bounces around super fast, while animation 2 would be the following upward pillar of ice. Flare's animation 1 is the inward spiral of fire, and animation 2 is the outward exploding. They are in order.

Animation 3 (or index 2 in FF3usME) usually affects the backround, like the blue backround in Ultima, or the wavy screen in Megazerk. Some animation's can even take your player (or monster) off the map, like Sneeze, or Bababreath.

Special, or index 4, has to do with a certain object showing up and interacting with the spell, for instance the Alexander Summon where his metal Jaw opens and releases the beam. That is the special animation. The ghost's in Evil Toot? You guessed it. Try adding them to other spells and see what happens.

Sound, is obviously sound. Try swapping sound from one spell to another, and even to weapons. Longer sounds can sometimes get cut off as a result of another animation, and of course because the game uses Stereo. Some animations include the sounds with them, without changing the "sound" itself.

A spell animation (or rather a byte) can also be transfered to weapons, which are 8 bytes. For instance putting "66" in for the hit graphic of a weapon will result in that weapon releasing an aura canon upon striking. Change the palette of the hit graphic to whatever color you please, #'s 0-FF. Or 0-255. That is hex, here's a chart that will help you out: http://www.ascii.cl/conversion.htm

Byte 10, or the ??? byte is unknown but I have messed around with it and it seems to make certain animations faster or effect the movement of things like Dispatch and Cleave, but I'm not sure.

And for the "speed", or "repeat speed" setting, that's how fast one animation goes to the next, not how fast the spell goes as a whole.

FF3usMe's spell editor looks a little more complex than FF6MDE, and for the more spiffy spells it is. I would recommend starting out with MDE. Just know that the index 4 for usME = special animation in MDE. If you do decide to use MDE, here's a nice little reference for the intros and special animations: https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/showth...hp?tid=297

Also know that keeping index's in the same spot is generally a good idea, otherwise your spell might come out looking bad or a total mess and even glitch the game out in ways you could never imagine. But this is not always the case, you'll just have to experiment. Animation 1 has "priority" and will always use the 1st animation how the spell is intended. It's hard for me to explain this, but for instance if you were to move up a spells animation 2 to the 1 spot, it would do the 2nd animation instead, how the 1st one is supposed to. Again though, not all spells are friendly of having their index's moved.

Well, that concludes my essay for today. Making new spells is one of the funnest things to do, and is very rewarding and relatively easy to pick up. Good luck, and have fun!