Enemies packs and zoning...

Hi! Ok this is another infamous question of my blacklist:
i need of a bunch of space for formations, packs and some knowledge about zoning of FF3usME i think it's necessary now.

I'll write down a list of questions:

1) Lobos everywhere! they almost fill half of the whole packs list and covers all the zones of Veldt... which Lobos are actually used/necessary for the game? i'd like to replace all that useless packs with new formations and monsters;

2) Like lobos, i believe there's some other formation not labeled as dummied content in the game which still won't show... for example in zoning(above 127) there are too much leafers... any knowledge to share?

3) In the Packs screen there's a mysterious flag for all 4 formation slots which says: "Rand. w/next 3"... what does it mean and how it works?

4) Zoning: first 128(0 to 127) slots are used for battles in WoB and WoR... How 'bout the other 128? some slot is clearly used for dungeons and bosses?(so the note says) but not all the slots... how they work?
And even more important: how grass/forest/dry land and desert slots affects the ones after 127? and finally how can you use unused slots of zoning?

All except a couple normal packs contain Lobos, all those packs after 200 or so are unused packs.

Firstly though have you taken a look at this document by assassin that shows all the unused formations and packs?:
http://www14.brinkster.com/assassin17/gu...leaner.txt

I'm not exactly sure about the random with next 3 flag, other than it stands for 'randomize with next 3 formations' and it changes the encounter probability % some way. Hopefully someone could answer that in more detail.

Sounds Like there's a bunch of good infos... too bad for zoning which is not mentioned inside...

At this point i also wonder what formations/packs or whatever are used for Fight in the Collosseum or Veldt...?

Off hand I know that formation 575 (the last one) is used for Colosseum battles.
I'm not too learned of the inner working of the code related to the
'AF Invoke random Colosseum battle' command', which is what is called in the Colosseum battle event. All I know is there is a separate Colosseum enemy/prize list that probably calls the monster from there, outside of the normal packs.

The one with a single Pugs, huh?

I also wondered why 128x128 formation mould was used for him... now it makes a sense.

1) Lobos everywhere! they almost fill half of the whole packs list and covers all the zones of Veldt... which Lobos are actually used/necessary for the game? i'd like to replace all that useless packs with new formations and monsters;

As far as I've noticed, only the first 1x Lobo formation is used. It's an event battle in Narshe and a monster in a box in the beginner's house.

2) Like lobos, i believe there's some other formation not labeled as dummied content in the game which still won't show... for example in zoning(above 127) there are too much leafers... any knowledge to share?

I think those are zones for town or dungeon areas that have no encounters. Why a leafer was used instead of a lobo, I don't know (EDIT: It's because Pack 0 has leafers in it). Zones are stored in the same order as the location maps, which is how a zone gets assigned to a location.

3) In the Packs screen there's a mysterious flag for all 4 formation slots which says: "Rand. w/next 3"... what does it mean and how it works?

This is used only for the Floating Continent. Because the map is so large, the developers wanted to have more than 4 possible formations to encounter. So, they created this flag that increases it from 4 to 16 possible formations... you'll notice that the next 3 packs are all Floating Continent encounters too, so it chooses randomly between those four packs. I haven't tried using the flag outside of the Floating Continent though.

4) Zoning: first 128(0 to 127) slots are used for battles in WoB and WoR... How 'bout the other 128? some slot is clearly used for dungeons and bosses?(so the note says) but not all the slots... how they work?
And even more important: how grass/forest/dry land and desert slots affects the ones after 127? and finally how can you use unused slots of zoning?

As I mentioned before, the last 128 zones are dungeon and town zones, and are stored in the same order as the maps themselves (there is no lookup table). The grass/forest/dry land slots are not based on terrain in dungeons or towns. What you are really seeing, are four zones for four different maps. It's not about terrain at all. The interface is kind of misleading in that way.

That is some good info, Abyssonym.

Thanks for sharing.

It's like Abyssonym knows everything!

I had the suspect zoning was somehow related to enemy maps encounter which followed FF6LE map order...

That flag is definitively something really amazing! A lot of stuff starts to make a sense: actually i think i'm starting to understand how WoB and WoR maps actually manage to keep in one single map 64 zoning slots: first of all it must be hardcoded in a way that the 8x8 grid which splits the world separates something like 64 sub map pieces, so that each piece has its zoning slot... still i ignore how.

There could be a relation too among that flag and each piece of world maps...
Hey Abyss...(or anyone else) do you also know how works randomization among 4 consecutive packs, bounded from the flag? i mean, it happens something like one battle from pack 1, then pack 2, 3, 4 and then returns to 1... or there's literally a choice among 16 battles? (with 4 rare ones among the group)

Even more interesting: what happens if i set the flag even to the fouth pack? Could it theorically start a chain of 7 packs? and so 10, 13, 16, 19, ...

It should be possible simulate a zoning slot, using that flag, still no clue on how to select one of the 4 packs, according to the tile you're walking on.
In other words i'm talking about the possibility of creating a 3rd world(or even 4th?!)... assuming you manage to handle the other zoning slots in the proper way...

Hey Abyss...(or anyone else) do you also know how works randomization
among 4 consecutive packs, bounded from the flag? i mean, it happens
something like one battle from pack 1, then pack 2, 3, 4 and then
returns to 1... or there's literally a choice among 16 battles?

No, the pack it chooses is very random... for that reason, it has been a headache for people who speedrun the game. Even though they can predict encounters everywhere else in the game, they can't predict encounters on the Floating Continent because of this mechanic.

However... you can predict when a rare encounter will occur on the floating continent. So you can know, "the next encounter won't be a Dragon" and "the next encounter might be a Dragon", but you can't know "the next encounter will be a Dragon".

Even more interesting: what happens if i set the flag even to the fouth pack? Could it theorically start a chain of 7 packs? and so 10, 13, 16, 19, ...

I think you would be a good candidate to test this