Restrict espers by character.

I can't really think of an 'easy way' to distribute this, though certainly a base IPS that people could modify with simple hex-editing is probably better than nothing.

At least, you can bet -I- would use it!

That's certainly an idea too. I could distribute both the patch and the assembly file with instructions on how to directly modify either one depending on the user's preference.

Having customization Esper equip tables means that now people can customize character's skillsets just by having certain Espers only teach certain spells, and then only allowing those Espers to be equipped by a small number of PCs. This is brilliant. The heart and soul of increasing unique-ness in these PCs.

That was our idea. All espers have had the spells they teach and their level up bonuses modified rather heavily to complement this hack.

Some questions though: You said you added the changes at the end of C3 - do you know what patches are usually applied here or what you had to erase to fit this in here?

Bank C3 deals with the menus, so anything that modifies them in some way (probably things like adding character classes or extending the character limit for names/spells/etc.) would likely modify the same bank.

I didn't have to erase anything, though. I had to modify four jumps at various points, and the rest of what I wrote takes up unused space toward the end of the bank.

What addresses did you have to Jump from to make all this work?

I had to modify the following locations:

C3/1B61: Loads the skills menu and gets the character ID.

I interrupt this routine in order to store the character ID in $1CF8 (Bushido names in FF6j but unused in FF3us). Any unused RAM location would be fine, though.

C3/5524 and C3/58E1: Both of these locations jump to the subroutine that checks if espers were already equipped while building the esper list (at C3/5574).

I modified these jumps to cycle through the esper and character tables I added. Originally, the only thing keeping a character from equipping a certain esper was if someone else already had it equipped. That's why I use this routine and just expand the conditional to include the customized tables.

C3/55B2: When trying to equip an esper someone else already has equipped, this subroutine writes out the error text at the top ("$Chr has it!")

This was modified so the game will print out "Can't equip!" if the player tries to equip an esper on someone that can't use it. The old error message will still be displayed if the esper in question is equipped on someone else.

Would it be easy for you to make an IPS with only the Esper equip modification in it (as opposed to all those other cool changes you made! Looking forward to trying your hack, BTW)?

Yeah, that's not a problem. I'll see if I can make it tonight or tomorrow and write up instructions on how to modify the tables through hex editing the IPS patch.

Since it's an ASM hack, does it still work with FF3usME, or does FF3usME crash when trying to load your file? What about LE?

In the limited testing I've done, this doesn't prevent FF3usME or FF6LE from working. There's no reason it should, since this particular hack only modifies the menus, which neither of those programs touch.

Man, this is so cool!

This kind of enthusiasm really helps motivation. I appreciate it.