CotG hack in two CDs?

Hi! (no, i still have to wait before i can continue the hack)

I was considering the idea of making CotG in 2 different ROMs... (if i'm not wrong i heard Tsushiy made the same with his hack)
In the first place because i need more than 383 monster slots to do all what i want, changing rom i can swap all what appears only in WoB with different stuff(monsters, sprites, maps...)
Theorically Madsiur's tools still wip should be able to deal with that, but i dunno what to do, in the case i'll be able to finish before him, yet it's quite interesting the idea of having available 2 extra empty Wo? maps... It could also allow the use of 2 extra chocobo powers and many other stuff that still have to come in mind.

In the case, after the world is destroyed and before the "1 year later..." message screen appears i'd put a black screen (like the choose scenario room) in which there's a save point (a message will tell you of saving the game because it's the end of "Disc 1") and an NPC which will ask you to insert "Disc 2" and restart the game. After that it might start some kind of brief cutscene, similar to a trailer of disc 2.

Loading the save from Disc 2 you'll still be in the same room, but since it will be another rom with changed stuff, it will start WoR story from there.

Yet there's something i don't like: is there a way to avoid that someone can load a random save file and magically access the second disc? the same for loading that save on disc 1 and being able to skip something?
I cannot tell it for sure but maybe in ROTDS 1.3 it's not possible to do that...
if that's the case, then i'd like to hear how Gi Nattak managed to do that.

I was considering the idea of making CotG in 2 different ROMs... (if i'm not wrong i heard Tsushiy made the same with his hack)

No FF6T is on one ROM. He expanded the monsters that's all.

Loading the save from Disc 2 you'll still be in the same room, but since it will be another rom with changed stuff, it will start WoR story from there.

The only way to do that is to rename the SRM file to the name of the second ROM.

Yet there's something i don't like: is there a way to avoid that someone can load a random save file and magically access the second disc? the same for loading that save on disc 1 and being able to skip something? I cannot tell it for sure but maybe in ROTDS 1.3 it's not possible to do that...

It's not possible to load a vanilla save because it breaks the mod due to SRAM modifications. It was not made in a way to prevent people using save files found on the internet, at least it wasn't the sole purpose of those modifications. If you want to avoid someone of using a "random" save, make your mod to be unplayable with a vanilla save.

Edit: This is not even a 100% sure way to prevent cheating or event skipping. One could use the first save of your hack and then edit the SRAM directly in order to skip parts.

Edit2: Also don't use the word "CD" when talking about a SNES hack. It is really misleading :P

No FF6T is on one ROM. He expanded the monsters that's all.

This is what happens when i listen my bro

The only way to do that is to rename the SRM file to the name of the second ROM.

Actually my idea was to put all inside a zip, opening it, you extract 2 folders named Disc 1 and Disc 2, inside them there's two patches with the same name(you know it's different due to the name of their folder)
Yet it might be confusing? There's no doubt that according to the player they would handle those files in their own way... dunno what to do here... any suggestion on what would be more user-friendly is well accepted.

It's not possible to load a vanilla save because it breaks the mod due to SRAM modifications. It was not made in a way to prevent people using save files found on the internet, at least it wasn't the sole purpose of those modifications. If you want to avoid someone of using a "random" save, make your mod to be unplayable with a vanilla save.

Edit: This is not even a 100% sure way to prevent cheating or event skipping. One could use the first save of your hack and then edit the SRAM directly in order to skip parts.

What kind of SRAM modifications, for example?
Some example of what kind of edit would make a vanilla save, or another mod save would be cool, meanwhile i have an idea for dealing with cheating and skipping: at the start of each bossfight of the storyline a battle var checks its value: if the value is not the expected one, then a battle quote says something like "CHEATER!!!" and someone uses Special attack with the animation # above 40... the one which resets or freeze the game
Each time a boss is killed, then that battle var is incremented by 1, so you expect that against Whelk that var should be equal to 0, against Marshal equal to 1, and so on.

Another thing i might want to do with my hack could be erasing Veldt from the face of earth: in the second rom the player would fight some enemy he still have to meet in WoR and it's not good... especially if they're bosses!
Even worse, if i use that trick to deal with cheaters, then for no reason i should allow the player to meet defeated bosses again, or the battle var will be skrewed and/or the game crushed
What should i do to make it happen? is erasing Veldt map tiles from the maps enough or i have need to do something else or different?
If i remove Veldt, then i'd probably make learn rages just meeting the enemy, like in Beyond Chaos mod.

Edit2: Also don't use the word "CD" when talking about a SNES hack. It is really misleading

Whoops, maybe i made you somehow think i did some hardware work with my hack, before reading the thread? Unfortunately no...
It's just that it reminded me when PSX FF games and other titles had more Discs inside the cover...(it was due to lack of space, but it was really cool)
So i used that term for my hack.

I would think having an ips that is designed to be applied to a rom patched with "cart 1", creating "cart 2". Then when you come to the end of Cart 1, all you do is patch, reload the same rom/save game. At that point, a save state or a save game should come in just fine. Maybe have the exit to this room perform the check if you are infact using Cart 2.

As for "cheating", not happening. You could stop some things, sure, but in the end you created it using a hex editor. Nothing is gonna stop a motivated, or just plain stubborn, player from hacking your hack. In other words, I suggest not bashing your head against the wall to many times over anti-cheats. Furthermore, loading a vanilla save should be hit or miss anyway due to the mass changes you've talked about doing. Most vanilla saves should be bugged or just ate the hell up. Again, if the cheater wants it that bad then it is their loss as they'll be missing the true glory that is your hack.

As for the general idea, well, it is CHEATING as far as hacking goes. Your supposed to suffer through trying to cram all that cool new stuff into the one rom. That's all good though if your going to add so much whicked chit to your hack that it easly justifies needing two roms because the awsomeness just wouldn't fit into one hack. In that case, hell yeah!

PS: "Cart 1" = Cartriage 1. Figured that would be the proper term.

I don't think it's a good idea patching part 2 on a rom already patched with part 1: chances the rom will explode are almost 100%

Clearly i know there's no way to stop some good hacker from hacking with hex, unless there's a way to put a password on the rom when someone tries to open/edit it with hex editor...
for the others should be more than enough that anti cheat trick... in any case tracking down the progresses with a battle var might be a good idea, for triggering certain events/battles in a certain moment of the game.

For a general anti cheat, yeah anything that will jack story events would discourage cheating.

As for patching to v2 from v1 or vanilla, would all come into play at patch creation. If you give it a fully functional disk 2, it doesnt really matter what base rom you use, it will turn it into disk 2. Then it is entirely dependant on the user to apply it do a disk1 instead of vanilla. In my mind, it would be more simple than telling people to rename everything. Just patch again and keep playing.

You creating disk2 from disk1 may or may not be a good idea, but once complete, it only depends on what you base the created patch from. The patch creator is stupid, it only looks at hex. Hell for that matter there isnt really any reason you couldnt create a patch that turns FF6 v1.0 Rom into Vanilla Super Mario World. All it knows is x amount of hex changes to something else.

According to what are you saying, then it looks like it will actually work, huh?

PS. about eradicate Veldt from my hack... anyone knows how to do it?

PS. about eradicate Veldt from my hack... anyone knows how to do it?

If you want to reset the Veldt in the WOR, you just gotta reset the monster formations beaten at $1DDD-$1E1C.

That would be an idea that i'll consider...

Still on the other side... what is necessary to do if i really want to erase Veldt from the game?

Still on the other side... what is necessary to do if i really want to erase Veldt from the game?

As for encounters, you could try removing the CMP and use a BRA instead of the BNE. I think this would skip the veldt formation picking. I did not tested this though.

Code:

C0/C236:    A524        LDA $24
C0/C238:    C9FF        CMP #$FF       (was it an invalid/Veldt pack?)
C0/C23A:    D003        BNE $C23F      (continue if not)
C0/C23C:    4CDFC2      JMP $C2DF      (if it was, go pick a Veldt formation instead)

As for the music, the high byte of the tile property (stored in $C3) and event bit $1EB7:3 are responsible of playing or not the song when you are on the veldt. You can make a search in bank EE for the world "veldt" and you'll see the relevant code.