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Monster Expansion

#11
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Well the good news of the day:

I succesfully expanded monsters. All the relocated data have been tested and function correctly with a vanilla monster. All relocated and expanded data have been tested with one additional monster (#384), except sketch, control and item stolen. I just did not want to bother with testing those since my test monster was in Narshe, but I don't see any limitation in the code so I'm pretty sure there is no problem. All espers have been tested to make sure their graphic appears correctly.

I updated the initial post with ASM changes. You COULD apply the code with xkas and relocate the data yourself, but you'll need to edit everything manually after. I just put it up there as a reference for now.

I'll start working on the editor. There will be an expansion management section in it so you can relocate and expand the data where you want.

I'm pretty the max number of possible monsters is 511, since 512 is null but also because the last byte of the formation data has 6 bits reserved for the third digit of each monster (6 max). So since a bit set is either 0 or 1, a monster with the last two digit as 52 can only be either 052 or 152.
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#12
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Emperor madsiur for the win LOL

seriously though man you are a f**k**g legend dude great work as always


"Sometimes ninjas do wrong to each other, and in dat way the force of tha earf' comes around da moon - and at that presence, da dirt, it overshadows the grass, so you're like, I can't cut dis grass, there's no sun comin' through. So in order to enable each other the two fruits have to look each other in da eye and understand we can only be right, as da ripe is wrong, you know what I mean?"

-HNIC
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Two questions that may or may not be in the scope of this.


Sprites: This is increasing the monster count and space does that include sprite size? If so, would espers be able to have larger sprites as well?


Rage: How are extra monsters going to effect the rage list/vedlt? Actually, that goes back to the Allo Ver problem, anything over said number doesn't show, so that wouldn't matter generally speaking. Not including dealing with a larger Rage list, what would it take to make the new monsters show on the Veldt?

I haven't messed with monster info enough to know the extent of what this expands. I just know the last time I touch it free space hated me.


The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.
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#14
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(03-15-2015, 12:03 PM)d-_-b Wrote: seriously though man you are a f**k**g legend dude great work as always

The legends are the people who made the disassemblies. Without them, none of this would be possible.

(03-15-2015, 12:37 PM)catone Wrote: Sprites: This is increasing the monster count and space does that include sprite size? If so, would espers be able to have larger sprites as well?

No it has nothing to do with sprite size. I think an espers can be 128x128, but someone correct me if I'm wrong, his mold is handled in the esper animation data.


(03-15-2015, 12:37 PM)catone Wrote: Rage: How are extra monsters going to effect the rage list/vedlt? Actually, that goes back to the Allo Ver problem, anything over said number doesn't show, so that wouldn't matter generally speaking. Not including dealing with a larger Rage list, what would it take to make the new monsters show on the Veldt?

If you place a new monster in a formation already appearing on the veldt then the formation won't appear anymore. See this post.
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true enough lol

but as for the esper molds they are 128X128 as well


"Sometimes ninjas do wrong to each other, and in dat way the force of tha earf' comes around da moon - and at that presence, da dirt, it overshadows the grass, so you're like, I can't cut dis grass, there's no sun comin' through. So in order to enable each other the two fruits have to look each other in da eye and understand we can only be right, as da ripe is wrong, you know what I mean?"

-HNIC
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#16
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That clears up everything Veldt related.

I was actually talking about the size in bytes, not the mold size. As in make an existing esper or monster bigger in graphics size. Yes, really I know that little regarding monsters. It is sad, I know.


The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.
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Since monster expansion will require expansion of rom data anyway, I would suggest moving monster attack names to expanded romspace (likely in the same manner as usME's expansion option, for compatibility) and using that space for the extra monster names, since they already lie immediately before.

Monster stats will likely need to go into expanded space, and then steals and drops can go where that was.

I can't think of any other space optimization offhand, I just thought of this as it's what t-edition did to conserve $F0-$FF free space. it also did similar things with other data expansions.

Also, making larger graphics is unlikely. VRAM is extremely tight in battle state; the 32000 hp damage hack had to squeeze 5 digits into 4 tiles because there was actually not enough space for 10 more digits in VRAM.
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#18
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(03-15-2015, 02:05 PM)dn Wrote: Since monster expansion will require expansion of rom data anyway, I would suggest moving monster attack names to expanded romspace (likely in the same manner as usME's expansion option, for compatibility) and using that space for the extra monster names, since they already lie immediately before.

Yeah good thinking. That been said, in the editor, I'll let people choose where they want most of the different data. I'm going also to include longer special attack names option (like usME if I'm not mistaken), since attack names will be broken in usME. However, I only did that ASM file and chart as a reference for anyone would would like to add monster manually the time I code the editor.

I ran into some problems moving monster names, that is why I left them there in my test ROM, they are not fully documented. I'm missing a piece somewhere...
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#19
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Small update: All the manual work done in the test monster can now be done in the editor:

[Image: Capture_zpsxm2jeufn.png]

Instead of giving the choice to move all the data where you want, an option that is less user-friendly and that would have give me headaches to code, I decided to only give the option to decide where you want the graphics. All the other expanded data fits easily where the graphics originally were.

AI scripts are expanded to one bank (EA) and will be moved regardless if you already expanded them or not with FF3usME. Graphics also get an extra space of one bank. They can be moved starting from bank F2 (F0 is for expanded FF3usME dialogues and F1 for WOR/WOB maps expansion in FF6LE). Either you take this package or you code your own editor :P

I'm also including 16 letters special attack option like FF3usME, just to make sure my editor doesn't take anything away that was possible with FF3usME.

I will add support for exhirom later but now I'm moving to the monster graphic editor.
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#20
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Very nice,

Keep kicking ass, this is definatly headed in the right direction to be great.


The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.
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