Condensing Spell List in Battle

re optimization: haha; they are a bit opposite.  two paths to the same goal.  i went ahead and coded my method, borrowing from your code, out of curiosity and boredom.  can post if wanted, but don't think there's any (measurable) advantage to it.

from what i can tell, yours should work.  it'll definitely be faster than the first version.

I'd be curious to see yours, just to compare -- I learn more from seeing everyone else's coding than I do just by coding myself, half the time.

your assumption regarding Summons seems fairly sound.

Realistically, I probably don't even need to include a check for #$FF/end of spells in the MP deduction function, because there shouldn't be a way to get to it with a spell the character doesn't know. XD But it's in the original function, so I figured it'd be better to be on the safe side with it.

have you tried unifying the list condensing for Magic and Lore?  if you can find somewhere to store parameters/bounds, it shouldn't be too hard to make a more flexible function.  now, it'll be a little slower (e.g. the index always being in 16-bit mode), but it'll save a lot of space.

... I hadn't, but now I'm thinking about it. I'll take a look at it tomorrow, after I get some sleep. (... Later today. Oops, it's 6AM.)


BTB said:

I'm keeping my eye on this one. It's a request I've made and have had every hacker I know throw up their arms at.

It's completely functional now, if you've got space for it! I still kinda can't believe I finally figured it out. XD Like I said above, though, I am going to take assassin's suggestion and try unifying the condensing code.


ETA:
Ooooor I could not sleep, and code the unified version instead. 

Code:

org !freespace_C2_0
condenseSpellLists:
PHX                ; This is our character ID coming in
PHP
REP #$10
LDY #$0004            ; this is the index of the first Spell slot in the character's spell list
STY $F0    
LDX #$004A            ; this is our main loop index; we're checking 53 spells and 23 lores, since we
                ; don't need to actually check the last slot of either list
    .checkLoreLoop    
    LDA ($F2),Y
    CMP #$FF
    BNE .checkNextLore

        .findNextLore
        INY #4
        CPY #$00DC        ; if we've hit the first Lore slot, there are no more spells to copy back
        BEQ .noMoreSpells    ; so jump out, reset $F0 to start our lores
        CPY #$013C        ; this is after the last Lore slot, so if we've gone that far, there are no more spells to copy back
        BEQ .noMoreLores
        LDA ($F2),Y
        CMP #$FF
        BEQ .findNextLore

    PHX            ; set aside the starting byte for the spell we found
    PHY            ; we'll be pushing and pulling within the loop, but we need to know
    LDX #$0003        ; where it started so we can blank out the slot we copied from
    
        .copyNextLore
        LDA ($F2),Y        ; Yes, we just did this, but we need to do it within this loop, too
        PHY            ; this stores our Y location, i.e. the next slot with a spell learned
        LDY $F0            ; and loads our index for slot to write to
        STA ($F2),Y
        PLY            ; back to our 'write from' location
        INY            ; and gets the next byte
        REP #$20
        INC $F0            ; while getting our next write-to byte, too.
        SEP #$20
        DEX            
        BPL .copyNextLore    ; if we haven't done four bytes, loop back and grab the next

    PLY            ; this is the first byte of the slot we copied from
    LDA #$FF
    STA ($F2),Y        ; this blanks out the spell we copied from
    LDA #$00
    STA ($F4),Y        ; and zeroes out the MP cost
        
    PLX            ; this gets our index for the loop -- how many spell slots we've checked
    BRA .weCopiedALore
    .checkNextLore
    REP #$20
    INC $F0            ; if we DIDN'T copy a spell, we need to increment our 'current slot' index
    INC $F0            ; but if we did, the loop already has it pointing to the next slot
    INC $F0
    INC $F0
    SEP #$20
    .weCopiedALore
    LDY $F0            ; and then copy it over to Y for our next loop through
    CPY #$00D8        ; if this is the last spell slot
    BEQ .checkNextLore    ; loop back up and INC again so we skip over it and point at our first Lore slot
    
    DEX
    BPL .checkLoreLoop
    .noMoreLores
    
PLP    
PLX
JMP $532C

.noMoreSpells
LDX #$0016            ; reset our index to cover just the Lores
STY $F0                ; and reset our working index for the first Lore slot
BRA .checkLoreLoop

Found a couple of other little places I could tidy up the code, too, including the placements of a PHX and such.