My first day, and already disappointment...

Hello all, I just very recently found out that this even existed (hacking of my favorite childhood games) and now i'm obsessed. I'm super happy with what some people have done, but like everyone else I feel I can do it more to my liking. So I'm undertaking a project that will expand on some of my favorite lore from the original story as well as add somethings that we all wish had happened anyway. I'm sure I'll be sharing more detail involuntarily as I get help on this journey, and I'll make a project thread once it's finally established. OK, so on to the gritty...

The very first thing I have to do to make this work is change Locke's palette to 4.. that's all. I'm using zone doctor (because I'm still working on wrapping my head around making sense of the hex) and it looks like it should be pretty easy; in the event where Terra falls down the hole, I scrolled down and look for all of the bits of info about Locke, change the palette from 1 to 4 and viola! one messed up looking Locke... except when i change it, the map of Arvis' house never loads after Terra's flashback... so i am completely lost at this point. Any help would be fine, but please take it easy on me and assume I know nothing of what i'm doing (cause I probably don't.) Thanks in advance.

lockes pallet is called more then once via events man, its called many times dont ask me why lol

Congratulations! You broke it! Seriously, congratz.

The fact you broke the game means you did SOMETHING, and that's a step in the right direction.

As for your problem, I'm not sure what your changing so I can't even begin to guess as to why it broke. As far as changing palettes go:Read this for starters. If that don't get you where you want to be, maybe you'll have a good idea of a better thing to search for. Remember there is alot of stuff you can change. How you explained changing Locke's palette with Zone doctor could mean a few different things. That with the fact I'm not even sure exactly what zone doctor can do entirely. Gotta be very specific for more accurate help.

I scrolled down and look for all of the bits of info about Locke, change the palette from 1 to 4 and viola! one messed up looking Locke... except when i change it, the map of Arvis' house never loads after Terra's flashback... so i am completely lost at this point.

If you use Zone Doctor event editor, there could be a ROM corruption. Otherwise, you made a change in locke's event that cause this error.

I understand, more detailed information is needed. I should have not posted moments before going to bed then. Heh.

I will post some screen shots of what I'm working with as soon as reasonable. I think that thread you sent me to. Will help though, just can't view it correctly ATM, since I am at work and the HTML needs a better viewer for the document madsuir posted. I will post back after my next valiant attempt thanks for the replies.

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I scrolled down and look for all of the bits of info about Locke, change the palette from 1 to 4 and viola! one messed up looking Locke... except when i change it, the map of Arvis' house never loads after Terra's flashback... so i am completely lost at this point.

If you use Zone Doctor event editor, there could be a ROM corruption. Otherwise, you made a change in locke's event that cause this error.

Is ROM corruption something that happens with zone doctor? I'm not affraid of learning hex editing, just while combing through the forum on the matter I saw that and thought "great! Shortcut!" That's the only reason I started where I did. Hopefully after a better read through tonight of the aforementioned thread I can get it sorted and narrow down what's causing my anguish. Thanks for your reply, this forum has already exceeded expectations for me.

Is ROM corruption something that happens with zone doctor?

Read this post. It should asnwer your question.

To fix your problem, you should post the event code line you've changed at least. To know what went wrong exactly, you could compare your Locke intro event with the same event in a original ROM.

Hello again. I have read through that thread. I definitely need to get the code I changed, I know this, just haven't had a chance to sit in front of my computer yet. I am going to attempt to do it again tonight, I'll download a different ROM (though the ROM I have has an OK checksum) and try it with that. If I get the same thing I'll be back. Thanks for your time.

Always keep backups of every thing you do and often. For starters, always keep a clean, unmodified in any way, ROM on hand. There will always be something that will break the rom your working on. If you go your whole hacking career without breaking the game more than once then your either inhuman or being way to carefull.

Any time you start doing something new, make a new copy of your active Rom. Break something that you cant fix? Bring up the copy, try again. I make a backup of my rom every time I make a major change. I've heard of people making patches from time to time to back up there work. Break it, get your clean rom out, patch it, try again.

What ever system works for you, just be sure to always have back up that your not currently working on. I cant stress that enough. It will really hurt when a stray keystroke ruins a weeks worth of hacking... I promiss.

Also, checksum is not really a good cue that its not broke. One stray byte change that you didnt notice can and will crash it.

I generally make backups super often even when I'm doing something that I expect to work flawlessly (such as when I was editing the overworld maps, and probably made about three dozens backups).

Personally, I don't trust Zone Doctor enough to use it. Take that for what you will.

OK, ready for my first lesson...
offset CC/A629 43 (assign palette $xx to character $xx) followed by 01 01, if I change the first 01 (to anything) it changes the palette to Edgar's (00 I believe) and if i change offset CC/A626 37 (assign graphics $xx to object $xx) followed by 01 01, to anything else it pulls up Terra's sprite (now in Edgar's colors) I tried following the thread about palette editing, but it made zero sense to me. The addresses that are listed do not have the bytes I expected, and if I subtract the 200 accounting for no header, the bytes make even less sense. What I am essentially trying to do is pull Shadow up here instead of Locke, so I[/code] ultimately want to set the sprite with the right palette and dog block (everything else I can edit pretty easily in FF3usME) I did get creative on FF3usME at first, but when shadow came in he was brown, which is not cool. So yeah, I have a feeling I not only have to edit the event, but also another byte somewhere else to maybe activate that sprite and palette to make it available for the game to load. But on the bright side by editing the hex and not using zone doctor, it at least loads the next screen, so at least there's some progress. Thanks for your patience guys, one day this might click and I won't have to make such horribly embarrassing posts.

by the way, sorry about any bad form this is really the first forum I've been on that anyone's replied to, so I'm not real savvy with all tools for making code and such, hope it's not too confusing this way.