General Questions

1. What does expanding the ROM do?

2. Is it safe to apply patches without screwing up what I have allready made?

3. How do I get Blitz techniques to activate without keypad imputs?

4. How do I test out characters without having to play through the whole game?

5. Is there a way to make Rage like Lore where the player can retain control over the character?

1. Essentially gives you another megabyte of free space at the end of the ROM. It's generally unnecessary for most projects.

2. That depends on what you've changed. Most patches will come with documents that indicate what addresses they modify, so you would need to compare that with what you've edited.

3. http://slickproductions.org/ff6patch.php...nu%20Blitz

4. Depends on what you're testing. The best thing to do is just to make or download save states at various locations to allow you to easily test anything.

5. http://masterzed.cavesofnarshe.com/ff3.html - Scroll down to Controllable Rage

Looks like Synchysi covered your questions pretty well.

In regards to number 2 though, if you have already done some editing, adding patches gets a little... iffy. As he said "most" come with documentation, and even the ones that do come with documents, sometimes leave out fairly important details. For instance, was the patch made for a headered or un-headered rom is a big one (Yes, several patches out there leave you to guess). Be sure to keep track of what patches you have used, test them often while adding, always keep backups (not all patches come with an automatic removal), and as he said, compare the addresses in the patch's notes to what you've already done.

Good luck,

Madsiur covered a lot about patch compatability, check this thread for his notes and a link to a document covering even more on that subject - https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/showth...p?tid=1594
http://www.angelfire.com/al2/imzogelmo/Patch_Alloc.txt

Top 3 reasons to expand the rom would be if you need to write more dialogue, write additional monster AI's, or if you want to use FF6LE, as you have little to no room for the first two, and FF6LE just won't work period until you expand the rom

There's also this tool that will let you know if there's a conflict in patches. You'll just need to make an IPS patch out of the changes you made, then gather all the IPS patches you made and downloaded in one directory.

FF6LE just won't work period until you expand the rom

That's not exactly true, as I've worked extensively with FF6LE without expanding the ROM. You just need to be careful as it's quite limiting.

Nice, and I mean damn nice link there Synchysi. That link needs to be added to the tool section. Even if you have a hardon for doing things manually, being able to produce a nice clean list of change locations is slick(Granted, Lunar IPS gives you a list but only after you apply the patch). Definatly adding this to my handy tool belt.

Thanks a bucnh. This seems really helpful!

well seems Murex got his question asked. so i hope he don't mind if i expand on the thread since it's so general. i'm working n some alterations, i wouldn't call them hacks or mods cause im just using FFEusME 67 right now. when importing some of the great sprites here i noticed something i can't find any info on with my search fu. some of the characters have a Japanese symbol sprite next to the tent sprite. i'm told it means "special" translated but i can't find anything on what exactly it's for, if you can erase or overwrite it, or anything about it for that matter. If i remember right the characters that use that sprite spot have special chocobo scenes with specific angles needed and maybe thats what it's for? i see terra uses that spot as well but it's simply a riding down angle.

Didnt think FF3usME used that spot on the sheet... Personally thought they were using it as a spot to "sign" their work. If it dont show up on original sprites exported from ff3usme then it doesnt matter to the program(as I dont think that layout is game specific but editing program specific). I have been known to be wrong though. Also thought special sprites (such as celes in chains) are not on the standard sprite sheet but elsewhere.

Thanks catone. The thing that brought this up was i was importing Clydes sprite to replace Locke. Locke doesn't have the japanese symbol there but when i did import clyde it put a chocobo riding side view sprite there. it's identical to the one in the row above that. so i went to one of the characters with the Japanese symbols next to the tent and imported a few sprites and sure enough it replaced it with a side view riding sprite thats already in the above row. since it's putting a riding sprite there this leads me more to believe that it does have something to do with riding animations. the characters that have it are edgar, sabin, shadow, and celes which i think have special choco scenes, think the figaro escape from Kefka.... Terra is the only character to actually have a real sprite there- the riding down angle sprite. i was thinking maybe there is code somewhere that maybe pulls from existing sprites to generate additional riding animations. i thought at first it was some form of artist signature at first too until someone told me it translates to "special" and most characters are blank in that spot. i asked around on IRC and no one really knows. i also noticed on Hacks this "special" character is kept in tact, i just need to know if i need to add it back in or if it will mess something up or once a sprite overwrites that spot, since imports seem to do that automatically, if the rom is broken in the process...