Harp Weapon Tutorial

I am also creating a Bard for my hack, but instead of going through the hassle of making a harp animation I approached it another way entirely. My Bard does not have a "Fight" command at all, and would instead have a "Sing" command. The "Sing" command would be "Lore" renamed, and the animations for any song he sings would use variations on the Imp Song/Lullaby animations (wavy music notes affecting all enemies). In the event of Berzerk status on my Bard, the "harp weapon" animation would just be animated as a normal punch. In this instance there would be no harp visible, but you'd have a cool song animation.

If that isn't a thing you're interested in, here's a second idea to chase down the rabbit hole of digging through code. That enemy special attack is called "Wing Snap" used by the enemy Crasshoppr (47 in FF3usME). The animation for that attack (25 in FF3usME) is a single musical note that slowly flies across the screen and hits the character. I'm still new at this so I'm not sure how it would be done, but I'm betting there's a way you could steal that animation and use it for your Bard's Fight command (or whatever Fight-adjacent thing your Bard might have). You wouldn't be able to make the adjustment in FF3usME, but there might be a way to point that weapon's attack animation to it (or perhaps copy and paste the animation into free memory nearby?) According to the ROM map, the Monster Special Attack Animation Index is at $CF37C0-$CF393F. I don't have a disassembly for the $CF bank, so I don't know where it is though. Again, this wouldn't help you draw a harp on screen, but it's another music-related attack idea.

I completely overlooked the fact they had Lullaby/Imp Song animations!  Those are really nice.  Also thank you for telling me about the Crosshoppr's Wing Snap (I forgot the name).  I could think to trying out that idea.

Actually I had a thought. If I am unable to turn the harp into an actual weapon, I wonder how possible it would be to turn either a Tool ability or a Spell Ability into a special command ability, like !SHOCK, where the character holds the weapon and an attack animation would happen.  I just wouldn't know how to go about it.