Small, unnamed event project

Hello.

I am a guy with no ROM-hacking experience whatsoever. And therefore, I ask for your help. You see, I love a girl and I would like to tell her I do. But since we're both gamers and con-goers I would like to do it in a personal, surprising way. My plan is to add a small event in FFVI right after the esper in the mines reacts to Terra and the screen fades to black (you know, about 15 minutes into the game). Here, you would be moved to either a cave or small house and the dreamy screen effect would be used. After walking a bit, you would come across a desk where Edgar sits with his back to the camera. When you talk to him, a battle starts. The esper town theme kicks in and Edgar comes walking from the left. He starts talking, and after a while he spins around and changes into a custom sprite. The same happens to Terra, and Forever Rachel starts. The new character continues to talk, and soon enough the announcement comes. Here, a choice appears and she will be able to tell if she feels the same. Each branch goes to different dialouges but in the end of either choice the screen will fade to black.

So, like I said, I have no hacking experience at all. I've downloaded a few tools, like FFVIusME and tinkered around with, but I have not yet found any way to create new scenes and maps. And this is where you come in. If some kind soul would like to create an easy to understand guide about creating simple events and making custom maps, I would be deeply grateful. The more tools I can use the better too, since I know little to nothing about programming.

I think that's all. I hope you can help, and I will worship you forever if you do. This is really important to me.

Oh, and one last thing. An easy guide over dialogue reactions, like the sad head nod and laughing would be appreciated too. Also, I love your smileys.

Ohh, this sounds great!! I'm willing to guide you achieve what you desire, to create a custom event. This sounds promising

Custom events can be created nicely once you get the hang of creating them. On the contrary, battle events have fixed actions for specific characters. Meaning that, having Edgar walk across the battle screen might or might not be possible, or the idea might have to be redone. But you'll figure that out eventually.

My suggestion would be to check the threads about event hacking (beginner and intermediate) HERE , where there are video tutorials. You should be familiar with the hexadecimal base as well.

I hope you can help, and I will worship you forever if you do. This is really important to me.

This is a really nice project! You can attempt this event and I will gladly help along the way. Worst case scenario I could make it but it would be better if you try it yourself first. Any question is welcome, don't be shy!

You will need the following documents:

Event Dump and Event Commands Document
FF3info.txt

You should check the beginner video tutorial that XjcsX made (found here). I started with those to learn. He explain how to load a map and place NPCs and more.

Thanks a lot! I'll check out the links as soon as i get home.

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I watched the first video, and I really learned alot. It seems a lot simpler than I thought it would be, you basically just write two letter commands and instructions, right? Oh, and I think the second video is gone, or maybe the link is broken. Can I jump to the third one?

It's simple to write the code. But it's very time consuming to make an event look like a real interaction between people. Attention to details is amazing, but takes a lot of time.

And yes, go ahead and jump to video 3.

Now I've managed to make a custom map, put it in the game and move Terra to it when the screen fades to black. I'm so awesome.

But now comes the hard part. First, I need to know how difficult it is to make battle events. I'm leaning towards a normal one, because SNES9X for PSP (which we will be using) lags horribly in battle scenes. What's important is that I can change the two sprites into custom ones and that I can use most (if not all) of the walking around and emotion commands.

And while we're at it, does the videos cover importing custom sprites? I've watched most of them, but at 4B I decided to try and do the first part of the hack. And it worked pretty nicely!

But now comes the hard part. First, I need to know how difficult it is to make battle events. I'm leaning towards a normal one, because SNES9X for PSP (which we will be using) lags horribly in battle scenes. What's important is that I can change the two sprites into custom ones and that I can use most (if not all) of the walking around and emotion commands.

It's not that it is difficult to make battle event, but it can be hard to have exactly what you want. To understand, battle event does not work like normal events. Every battle command is 2 bytes long and in one command there can be 1, 2 or even 4 actions and you can't separate them . Most commands are custom for the scene they were made for, there is not as much flexibility as with normal events.

However, some commands are documented and the structure of a battle event is easier to understand than a normal event. The biggest challenge is to find the appropriate commands for what you want, and sometime a certain command doesn't exist, simply because it wasn't needed in any of the battle event of the game. If you are very motivated you might want to check some battle events, locate the good command and use it in your own event afterwards.

You can check this thread, there are info on battle event and Angelo, Gi Nattak and I posted some commands or events with the best description of each command we could make.

And while we're at it, does the videos cover importing custom sprites? I've watched most of them, but at 4B I decided to try and do the first part of the hack. And it worked pretty nicely!

You can import sprite with FF3usME or FF3SE. Those programs are available in the Tools thread. It's pretty easy to import a sprite and I think there is even a tutorial on this in the graphics tutorials section. Not sure though.

But now comes the hard part. First, I need to know how difficult it is to make battle events. I'm leaning towards a normal one, because SNES9X for PSP (which we will be using) lags horribly in battle scenes. What's important is that I can change the two sprites into custom ones and that I can use most (if not all) of the walking around and emotion commands.

It's not that it is difficult to make battle event, but it can be hard to have exactly what you want. To understand, battle event does not work like normal events. Every battle command is 2 bytes long and in one command there can be 1, 2 or even 4 actions and you can't separate them . Most commands are custom for the scene they were made for, there is not as much flexibility as with normal events.

However, some commands are documented and the structure of a battle event is easier to understand than a normal event. The biggest challenge is to find the appropriate commands for what you want, and sometime a certain command doesn't exist, simply because it wasn't needed in any of the battle event of the game. If you are very motivated you might want to check some battle events, locate the good command and use it in your own event afterwards.

You can check this thread, there are info on battle event and Angelo, Gi Nattak and I posted some commands or events with the best description of each command we could make.

And while we're at it, does the videos cover importing custom sprites? I've watched most of them, but at 4B I decided to try and do the first part of the hack. And it worked pretty nicely!

You can import sprite with FF3usME or FF3SE. Those programs are available in the Tools thread. It's pretty easy to import a sprite and I think there is even a tutorial on this in the graphics tutorials section. Not sure though.

Ah, ok. I think I'll go for a normal one, though. I didn't think of the lag when I first came up with the idea. And that would completely butcher the music and overall feel of the message.

Show us a video of how you're doing so far!

If you show us a video from time to time, we can suggest tweaks or fixes that might make your event even better.

As soon as there's something to show I'll make a video. Right now there's just a map loading.

I'm now trying to use Arvis as Edgar. I'm trying to change his position, but I can't find his coordinates in the event dump. I've watched the 4th video and know where I should look. Any tips?