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

So that brings up another question. Should I be using a headered or unheadered rom, and how can I tell the difference before delving in? And what are the benefits to each? From a glance it seems like an unheadered rom would make more sense since the event list is accurate that way, but I also don't know what purpose a header serves.

The SMC header won't have an effect on the hack that you make. If you find it easier to hack the game with no header, then do it.

Okay, roger that. I'm going to spend a portion of tonight working on the spell list since it's slow at work. I'm also going from memory since I can't pull up an actual list of spells at work, so I'm probably going to miss some somewhere.
Zaida
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Fire1/2
Bolt1/2
Cure1/2
Haste
Raise
Safe/Shell
Osmose
Pearl
------
Jago:
---
Scan
Ice1/2
Vanish
Image
Slow
X-Zone
Poison
Bio
Rasp
Flare
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Might as well jot down some interesting ideas for the SwdTech as well. These are rough, and I'll think of better names later.
Drain Attack: Deal damage, recieve health
Dispel Attack: Deal damage, dispel buffs ala dispel spell.
Banish: Single Target X-Zone effect (Ragnarok mayhaps?)
Shadow Strike: Functionally a Jump, different animation if I can swing that.
Retort: Some sort of counter attack.
Chill Strike: Ice Elemental damage
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Obviously numbers can be tweaked for balance. This is more for thematics. Jago being focused on dark, illusory magic and Zaida being a high divine caster under command of a primal god. Any suggestions to the spell list would be welcome. I'm really scratching my brain as to what to do with the SwdTech list though. I fell in love with CoV and the Guts command. I thought about applying an HP cost to each of the SwdTech abilities, with the level 1 ability being a weak drain attack, but I don't want to just copy what he had going. Plus if I did that, or something similar I'd probably just take rasp off the spell list. Or not. Redundency isn't an awful thing. Maybe bump the DrainTech up to level 2, and keep the rasp spell so you can decide if time or MP is more important. I might even just nix the HP costs and make the attacks useful without having an extra cost attached to them, though infinite HP forever might make things dull. Decisions, decisions.

Edit: Cecil, I completely missed your post! I guess that could work, but I'm not sure how to go about balancing that. Maybe have Ragnarok check their remaining health as a flat number, and then hit based off that. E.G. If they have less than 1,000 health then it hits, if over 1,000 health then it misses. Something like that. The more I think about it, the more I like this idea. It'll promote strategic thinking, and good use of the scan spell. In fact I think I just thought of another idea for Jago's SwdTech this way. Boss has reflect, Jago has a SwdTech that dispels (along with being useful against a myriad of other enemies with nasty buffs). So if you really want that Magicite from that boss, you'll have to first dispel his reflect status so you can monitor his health via the scan spell and finally end him with Ragnarok. This is awesome. Thanks for the inspiration man!

Edit2: Okay. Been following along with the event editing tutorial, and for the most part I can understand it pretty easily. It's really not all that hard. But...I'm really stumped by something. Everything is so rigidly arranged, and it seems like there's almost no room for alteration. How does somebody even begin to rearrange the game to create their own events? With how...packed in everything is, I'm honestly afraid to make any changes. It doesn't seem like there's any room for alteration whatsoever. Every event has to be exactly the same length, no bigger or smaller. I'm sorry if this is something really obvious that I'm just looking over.

Um...I haven't really done any hex editing in a while, and what I did do was almost nothing, but I'm pretty sure you can find a blank spot later in the ROM, and have the game call it, and then have the end of the script call back to where it was before. I'm not sure how to do that, or if I'm even correct though, and I don't know if there's a better way to do it, but if you're searching around for a solution, that...might be where to start(this must be the most wishy-washy post on this forum)?

Everything is so rigidly arranged, and it seems like there's almost no room for alteration. How does somebody even begin to rearrange the game to create their own events?

Event command B2 let you call a subroutine. As an example B2 00 00 31 would let you call the event code at FB/0000. The high byte is calculated from CA/0000, meaning you can't have event code before CA/0000. You just need to place the overwritten code in the subroutine you call, put the new code and end the subroutine with a FE.

Assignations of event (NPC and event triggers) with FF6LE can only be done from banks CA to CC, meaning the B2 command is more than useful for new events.

As for the ROM header, some patches require a header, some doesn't. It depends.

Hey, that's great information, thanks. I'll start looking into how I can make good use of that. I'll try and find a good starting place and go from there. So from an experience standpoint, what would you all recommend doing first? Worrying about the event hacking, or statting up the characters and getting the numbery bits down? The latter is obviously easier, but I don't want to put off the hard stuff either.

Personally I'd go for the hard parts first. That way you can shift the numbers to fit around the events, while shifting the events around the numbers may be trickier. Somebody else may have a different opinion on that however.

Also, that way you can take a break by working on easy stuff if you want, which doesn't work if that's all done already.

Hey guys! I'm back. I hit a bit of a rough patch in my personal life. Short version is I lost my job so hobbies took a backseat for a while, but that's been taken care of so this is still something I want to work on again. I'll have to try making a practice event on my own and see how it goes. I'm still a little unsure how to pull with B2, so that'll be something that I need to look into. The good news is I feel like if I can nail that then the whole thing will fall into place. I'm confident I can create the characters, and I have a rough draft of what I want the story to look like in my head. It's mostly trying to get the events going. I also need to figure out how to edit the text, but at this exact moment I'm literally falling asleep while typing this. Just wanted to say I'm glad to be back, and ready to get back to work!

Alright, I'm not quite wrapping my head around the B2 command. I get that it pulls a subroutine from another part of the game, but I'm not quite grasping how you determine where it's coming from. How does 00 00 31 translate to FB/0000? I'm also finding myself nervous to really start anywhere. I'm afraid to just go thrashing through the hex, because I'm worried that I'll end up breaking something else in the process. My gut tells me to sort of section off a piece of the game, and go from there, but I'm still trying to figure out how everything is arranged. I have a feeling that I'm just making this a bigger problem than it needs to be in my head though. Once I actually DO get started, I think things won't be quite as catastrophic as I'm making it out to be, since I can just change where things point to, and events that get broken can either be fixed, or just point to a different, non-broken event that can be then edited to my whims. Is my thinking on the general right track here, or am I way off?

Edit: On an unrelated note, is Imageshack broken? None of the images in the tutorial are working anymore, and I've seen a couple of threads with busted Imageshack images too. On top of that I logged into Imageshack, and I can't view my own pictures, but I can see their names.

How does 00 00 31 translate to FB/0000?

When working with events, all calls are relative to CA/0000.

CA + 31 = FB

If you're trying to call FB/47D3 (for example), you'd have to write the destination address in little endian (reverse order, basically). So that instruction would look like:

B2 D3 47 31

B2 is the instruction to call an event, and the rest is the destination. Reading it in reverse:

31 47 D3

Relative to bank CA:

(31 + CA) 47 D3

FB 47 D3