Satoascorpion's Inspiration Thread

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but... I am not a skilled hacker.
Gasp!

No really, it's not a secret or anything. My skills are very basic, so there's nothing new or innovative here. However, one thing I AM is a good thinker. I'm always coming up with new ideas that make the most of everything I have at my disposal. Here, I will share the ideas I have, so maybe I can spread inspiration to others. Feel free to use any of these suggestions I present; just let me know when you do so I can see for myself how you do it!

Ask away, and I will do my best to provide you with unique ideas for whatever you're struggling with!

I'm making a hack utilizing the Guest Adder Patch and Edrin's mmmmmmagic patch to make Leo and Banon into sort of normal party members. How should I handle the Leo resurrection? I was thinking of having it involve having the Phoenix Magicite.

I'm making a hack utilizing the Guest Adder Patch and Edrin's mmmmmmagic patch to make Leo and Banon into sort of normal party members. How should I handle the Leo resurrection? I was thinking of having it involve having the Phoenix Magicite.

Ah yes, the inclusion of General Leo. Having Phoenix is a good way to go about it. Since I've never looked into it, I don't know how easy it is for the game to check your inventory for a specific Esper when triggering an event. The game does have ONE instance of this, however; and that's the petrified queen and turning Odin into Raiden. If those pointers could be modified, then General Leo's grave could, theoretically, be turned into a trigger that revives Leo if Phoenix is in your inventory. I think if you can make that idea work, then that would be awesome.

Story-wise, it would work, too. While Leo's too honorable to go after Kefka for revenge; he definitely would join the fight for justice... that's just the kind of badass he is.

Well, I was thinking of making it so you need to have Locke in your party, since you get Locke back at the same time as the Phoenix Magicite. Although I would think that there would be an event flag or something that it would check to see if it was checked or something.

In theory, I would think having checks for specific party members for certain circumstances is very hard to do, if possible at all. Only a few instances in the vanilla game have such things. Of course this is just my theory. I think a general check for the Phoenix Esper would work better, then it doesn't matter who's in the party... because it will only check for Phoenix, which yes having phoenix means you've unlocked Locke... but it just seems like having Locke be mandatory to unlock Leo seems unnecessary, unless it's specifically part of the story that it's Locke that brings back Leo... in which case shoot, go for it. Maybe it's a last request of Rachel's that Locke revive him.

Edit: Wow. I rambled ALOT there. My bad.

Checking if the party has an esper isn't to hard. As you said, the event with Odin. Checking for party members isn't hard either, "load case word with collected party members" one byte event command, then check the bit labled "Locke related bit multiple use" or some such in the event bit list. I think there is also the "X is available" bit at the bottom of the event bit list for such things.

*EDIT* To correct some of myself, SOME espers have a direct event bit. In the case of Phoenix, well, bit $0D7 is the recruit Locke in WoR bit, meaning you have the esper.
Another option entirely that you may or may not have played with is recycling some bits. I'm fond of the "talked to x soldiers" bits from the baquet. Just set them as you want during the event where Celes first wakes up on solitary island. Then during your events do a C9 instead of C1 to check for the recycled bit AND the WoR bit or the have falcon bit($0CD). Little more work, little more room to play.

Putting a party member at the head of the party, easy just more work than checking for it.

As for the original topic regarding ideas, ideas are good things. And unlike small children, tossing them around DOES help them develop into great things.

Sorry for interupting the idea tossing, just wanted to clarify my middle of the night posting. (Was half asleep at the time).

No no, by all means. Anyone can jump in. I'll just make sure we don't get too far off topic! That was a beautiful analogy, by the way. Anyways, I'm glad to see that you say his idea's are very very possible. That's the kind of assistance I need to know, to back up what I DON'T know.

Checking for the event bit is definitely cleaner than checking to see if Locke is in your party. Locke has no particular connection to Leo, so unless you're particularly clever, it will just be strange.

Although it may be worth an explanation why Phoenix can revive Leo and not Rachel. Unless the Magicite was fully powered up because Rachel disappeared.

Actually, checking if a specific character is in your party is done extremely often by the game. Often in parts where you can have any combination of characters in the party, it will check who is in the party to figure out who can "lead" the cutscene.

EDIT: With a quick 'grep -i "current caseword" EventScriptTxt.txt | wc -l', we get 238 times. Not as much as I thought, but eh.

Well, it actually probably would make sense that Phoenix could bring Leo back but not Rachel. Because the Magicite was damaged when Locke used it on Rachel, so it didn't exactly have the desired effects.

You know what would actually be interesting? Is if you had TWO requirements for unlocking Leo; having Phoenix in your inventory, and having Cyan in your party. Cyan always treated Leo with respect and dignity, considering how both men cherish honor over power or control. Cyan doesn't blame Leo for Doma's extermination, nor holds any ill will twords him for what happened (If you bring Cyan to the dinner), and he was actually the one who was most upset by the news of Leo's death. Now THAT sounds like a plan that works.