Expanding space for dialogue

I started work on a project a few days ago to insert the Tom Slattery script (i.e., the Final Fantasy VI Advance script) into Final Fantasy III for SNES. I formatted about 500 dialogues from the main script before noticing that my free space was running out pretty quickly.

I compared the two scripts and it looks like the Slattery script is about 45,000 characters longer than the original Woolsey script. That's a big problem, because there are only about 8,000 characters worth of free space in the FFIII ROM.

The battle dialogues won't fit either. There's barely any free space for longer battle dialogues, but the Slattery script is several thousand characters longer.

I was wondering if there's a reasonably easy way to relocate all the dialogues to a different part of the ROM and still edit them with the FF3us Multi Editor.

You should be able to expand your rom in the FF3us Multi Editor, there's a button to expand it in the main window. That will give you more space for dialogue.

You should know that there are already a couple hacks like this, though.
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1386/ - A "decensor" hack that expands dialogue.
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2247/ - A more recent hack that changes the script to be more like the GBA version.

I'm afraid that there won't be much demand for your version because of these.

I was wondering if there's a reasonably easy way to relocate all the dialogues to a different part of the ROM and still edit them with the FF3us Multi Editor.

FF3usME will expand town dialogues, but for battle quotes you'll need to relocate them manually an use an utility such as Atlas.

Phoenix Down!

Ahhh. On the other end of that spectrum, how would someone go about locating the new text pointer locations if he/she wanted to modify the dialogue from an expanded rom?

I'm asking, because I'm building a (mostly graphical) hack that requires me to change around a few pronouns to make sense, but I'm working off of Dr. Meat's "Relocalization" mod (which other than the expanded dialogue to match the GBA, also uses Angelo's restored ability name patch) aaaaaaand I can't find any of the town dialogue locations with Windhex and the tables. ....Now it's entirely possible I'm just doing the whole darn thing wrong, (ridiculously new to hex editing) but I'm thinking the dialogue bank was changed and is playing hide-and-seek.

....My other option would be to edit the GBA version, but I don't know if we have the addresses for the town dialogue pointers in that version either. lol.

Help? Pretty please?

If it opens with FF3usME you should be able to check on the very first main window when the program opens under 'manage expanded ROM', and it will show which bank the patch has been applied to at least, although that's not what you asked is it... I may not be understanding the intent of the question, and am wondering why you're not able to edit the dialog currently with FF3usME - having the ROM expanded shouldn't normally mess with its dialog editor function. Is there some kind of error you are receiving? Something like how the dialog pointers were hex edited and it cannot work with it anymore? If so we can be sure Angelo's patch wouldn't have caused this, so it must be something in Dr. Meat's hack he did/caused, possibly even saving twice in a row without exiting the program which can cause this error depending on certain changes or circumstances that I've forgotten, but it's a known bug with the program that causes a massive data shift. Fixing the dialogue editor back to working might be out of the realm of possibility without reverting/repairing the dialog and pointers to vanilla, which would be easy enough sure, but defeat the purpose of the hack's dialog changes of course lol. But first I should let you answer if this is indeed what's happening!

Anyways to locate where the dialogue pointer(s) is, one way would be to utilize a patch log report using Lunar IPS: using two original clean ROMs and then expanding one of them and applying the dialogue patch, and finally creating a patch from that and the clean ROM and the report will show the changed pointer(s) address, among many other things, but the actual pointers used for the dialog patch should be somewhat easy to pick it out once you know what bank the dialog patch was applied to, you see. There may be a shit-load of them though, I can't recall. They would all be in the same range at least I'd imagine.

EDIT:
I went and caused the 'save twice error' to my ROM just to show what all it effects shown by a patch report:

Lunar IPS (LIPS) Version 1.01
Apply IPS Patch Log

Offset Size RLE IPS_File_Range IPS_File_Size
------ ---- ID 00000000-00000004 5
CCF654 9A9 No 00000005-000009B2 9AE
F10000 68 No 000009B3-00000A1F 6D
F10068 B0 Yes 00000A20-00000A27 8
F10118 FFFF No 00000A28-00010A2B 10004
F20117 E28C No 00010A2C-0001ECBC E291
F2E3A3 18 Yes 0001ECBD-0001ECC4 8
F2E3BB FFFF No 0001ECC5-0002ECC8 10004
F3E3BA 2EFE No 0002ECC9-00031BCB 2F03
F412B8 BD Yes 00031BCC-00031BD3 8
F41375 EC7C No 00031BD4-00040854 EC81
------ ---- EOF 00040855-00040857 3

Total Patches: A (10)

As you can see, a massive data shift thus resulting in that error & rendering the Dialog Editor useless. Reverting this data with a backup ROM would fix it in this case, but for you if this is in fact the problem, that couldn't be done. Unless you may have caused it yourself and it's not a problem with the Relocalization mod by default, I didn't check into that and just assumed it is.

OOPH. Realized that this is a much different problem than I originally thought. It's actually more associated with FF3usME...and I don't want to drag this zombied thread more off topic. I'm going to open up a new thread to keep things tidy, if you don't mind, Gi.

(I'd still love your help though if you have the time!)

Thanks!