Starting my very first FF6 hack and had some basic questions.

It sounds like something that wouldn't be too ambitious as long as you stick to battle mechanics that are generally implemented already (of course, with twists like using Ragnarok as discussed above, but the mechanics can already accomplish this). The event editing should be doable and many things that you are probably looking to do can be altered with the ME. As long as you keep your scope small enough it should be quite doable to complete this hack if you have the time.

Excellent. I don't plan on completely destroying the battle system of the game. The major chances I plan on are:

Locking 1 character out of the esper menu while giving them natural magic and dance.

Giving the other character exclusive access to Magicite and the SwdTech command.

Altering SwdTech and Dance to better fit the characters in mind.

Finding an interesting way to do Ragnarok. Applying it to one of the SwdTechs most likely, or something akin to that.

Adding Magicite to the Ragnarok item list if that's possible.

That's the major mechanical stuff I want to do. Everything else is just lot's of event editing and level editing. Obviously monster encounters will have to be changed and tweaked, but eh. That's not hard. Also coming up with a fun penultimate boss or 3. ;D

And apologies if I get chatty about this. I work at a call center 3rd shift, and it's boring as sin. This is one of the few websites I can access from work, so I'm always looking to bounce ideas off of people to help curb some of the boredom between calls.

Adding Magicite to the Ragnarok item list if that's possible.

This is the only one that sounds really difficult. Magicite isn't an Item in the traditional sense, so this is probably quite difficult to do. If you're lucky, this might be light ASM work and somebody could point you in the right direction (I don't know much about how this part works myself), but I suspect that it would be pretty tricky.

And apologies if I get chatty about this. I work at a call center 3rd shift, and it's boring as sin. This is one of the few websites I can access from work, so I'm always looking to bounce ideas off of people to help curb some of the boredom between calls.

No problem. I'm always happy to discuss new ideas and such for hacks, as long as you're not posting every ten minutes with a minor detail or some such.

Aaaaand now I'm gonna be self conscious lol.

But regardless, okay. so Ragnarok/Magicite shenanigans is out. I still like the idea quite a bit. I might still use Ragnarok to get relics, and make Magicite 'major souls'. I'm thinking 5 pieces of Magicite at the moment. 2 as prizes from boss battles, 1 you can buy from wandering back alley guy, 1 as a story piece, or reward from exploring town, and 1 as a prize from a puzzle. I actually have a similar idea for Dance. Solving a puzzle will grant you a warp to an icy area for the elusive 8th dance. Might even make that a mini-dungeon that has the Magicite at the end! This is coming together nicely in my head.

I need to start planning out the SwdTech list, as well as the spell lists and possibly the Dance lists if I decide to edit that. I might not since it's already quite naturey as it is. I'm also undecided if I want the Magicite to have summons attached to them still. It seems like it would be clunky for what I'm trying to do. I keep fluxuating back and forth in my head. One minute I'm thinking that there's so much work to be done and I get overwhelmed, and the next it seems like it's going to be a cakewalk. I think it's the dirty room syndrome. It seems really overwhelming until you buckle down and start hacking away (hurr hurr, get it?) at one piece and see how managable everything is in bite sized pieces.

I'm going to go home and see if I can dig up their old character sheets for ideas on what they could do exactly and see how much of it I can emulate.

Edit: So I think I know how I'm going to handle the Ragnarok issue. At first I was really worried about trying to come up with a unique relic for every single enemy you can fight, but then I had an idea. What if it was done via grouping? Aka you get a rat's soul from every rat type enemy (were rat, peeper, etc.). I could come up with a few different soul types, and then assign that grouping to each group I'd like to run. I might run into a limit of how many enemies I can run though. I can't look it up now, but I think there's 16 different Ragnarok tables? So that should be plenty, and allow for an interesting customization aspect to Jago. Now to come up with something equally fulfilling for Zaida. I think I might just make her relics buyable in shops. Think that's too boring though?

Aaaaaaactually, it'd be a fairly simple process to code an item that gives you magicite -- it would make it a two-step process (Ragnarok morphs enemy into item, you use item to grant you Magicite/Esper/Soul), but I could probably code it up in half an hour. Probably less. If you still want to go that route, I'd be happy to do it up for you.

Aaaaand now I'm gonna be self conscious lol.

Even if GrayShadows didn't have an easy solution for that last one, making a list of five things to hack into the game and having four of them actually be doable is a pretty good track record compared to many.

I need to start planning out the SwdTech list, as well as the spell lists and possibly the Dance lists if I decide to edit that. I might not since it's already quite naturey as it is. I'm also undecided if I want the Magicite to have summons attached to them still. It seems like it would be clunky for what I'm trying to do. I keep fluxuating back and forth in my head.

Yeah, just keep thinking and eventually you might come up with a way to do it that just hits the nail on the head, so to speak.

Edit: So I think I know how I'm going to handle the Ragnarok issue. At first I was really worried about trying to come up with a unique relic for every single enemy you can fight, but then I had an idea. What if it was done via grouping? Aka you get a rat's soul from every rat type enemy (were rat, peeper, etc.). I could come up with a few different soul types, and then assign that grouping to each group I'd like to run. I might run into a limit of how many enemies I can run though. I can't look it up now, but I think there's 16 different Ragnarok tables? So that should be plenty, and allow for an interesting customization aspect to Jago. Now to come up with something equally fulfilling for Zaida. I think I might just make her relics buyable in shops. Think that's too boring though?

Yeah, having the Relics organized by enemy type should be great to limit the explosion of Relics while still making it easy for the player to deduce which enemies to bother morphing. It seems like a reasonable solution to me.

While having Relics bought in shops isn't as interesting as the idea for Jago, it's not as though it's really going to be too boring exactly. After all, that's how most RPG's are implemented anyways.

Aaaaaaactually, it'd be a fairly simple process to code an item that gives you magicite -- it would make it a two-step process (Ragnarok morphs enemy into item, you use item to grant you Magicite/Esper/Soul), but I could probably code it up in half an hour. Probably less. If you still want to go that route, I'd be happy to do it up for you.

Sweet! I pegged the odds that this would have a convenient fix at around one in four (from my non-ASM perspective), and it's nice when these things work out.

(I'm very, very bad at forum wizardry, so I'll be typing up responses like this.)

Gray, that's amazing! I'd greatly appreciate it if I do decide to go that route. I'll keep it on standby, but I certainly don't want to waste your time so once I get to that point I'll hit you up and ask you to do it. I just have a couple of concerns like I always do. 1. If you did it multiple times, what would happen? As in, used the same esper granting item multiple times. 2. This is more from a balance perspective, but what I'd really like is to grant the espers as prizes from bosses via the Ragnarok effect, but a 1-hit KO move would trivialize the fights. Is there a convenient method of coding up something like the morph effect from FF7? I.E. If this attack deals the finishing blow, turn enemy into an item?

Lockirby2, Thanks. I have a lot of experience messing around with Final Fantasy Tactics in my spare time and creating my own classes and such, but for the most part I'm very aware of what can and can't be done in games typically. This is mostly going to be event editing, and that's honestly what I think is going to be the hardest. I started looking over the document Gray linked, but I didn't have much time to start following along. Still, it seems easy enough to learn.

Edit: Okay, so I'm doing this thing, and I'm already finding either inconsistencies with my own ability to follow instruction, or the tutorial. The very first thing it has me do is find offset CC/985F via Ctrl+G then search for C985F. However the written tutorial goes on to say that the Event Script is wrong. The event script says that the last hex there is $6B, but what he finds is $31. However, what I got actually was $6B when I followed his instructions, so now I'm hesitant to go any further since what he said was wrong actually ended up being right. I hope that made sense.

Edit 2: I decided to throw caution to the wind, and surprisingly it worked. I still have reservations about the fact that the tutorial said something was wrong when it wasn't though, but I think I can work around it at this point.

Is there any way to change the Morph hit% mid-fight? I feel like that would be the easiest solution, but I took a brief look at the ME, and I'm not sure how feasible that would be.

Edit: Okay, so I'm doing this thing, and I'm already finding either inconsistencies with my own ability to follow instruction, or the tutorial. The very first thing it has me do is find offset CC/985F via Ctrl+G then search for C985F. However the written tutorial goes on to say that the Event Script is wrong. The event script says that the last hex there is $6B, but what he finds is $31. However, what I got actually was $6B when I followed his instructions, so now I'm hesitant to go any further since what he said was wrong actually ended up being right. I hope that made sense.

There is a reason for this. There are both headered and unheadered ROMs. A header is 200 (hexadecimal 200) bytes of code that is at the start of the ROM, but not every ROM has a header. When a ROM has a header, everything is pushed down by 200 bytes. The Event Script was made using an unheadered ROM (like yours), so it matches your ROM perfectly.

However, the tutorial was made using a headered ROM, so xJCSx had to account for that. His method of Ctrl-G is strange though (not ineffective, but slow); normally you'd just add 200 (again, hexadecimal 200) to the address given in the Event Script. This would give the address of the proper byte on a headered ROM, which was necessary for him and not for you.

His method of Ctrl-G is strange though (not ineffective, but slow); normally you'd just add 200 (again, hexadecimal 200) to the address given in the Event Script.

Yeah, his method is strange. I remember it from his 1st video. The easiest thing is to remove the header and reapply it when necessary. This can easy be done with a hex editor that has an insert function.