Topic: FF6 Improvement Project

[ValiantKnife]

Hello everyone,

I read on the project's download page that no major script revisions are being done for this project at the moment. A few years ago I was working on a synthesis retranslation - using the work of many authors (SkyRender, Lina Darkstar, KWHazit, etc.) and the original JFFVI scripts. I recently graduated from university and was considering starting the project back up. If you'd be interested in using the material, I'd be willing to make a regular commitment to this project. Let me know.

Thanks,
VK

[darkmage]

Hello everyone,

I read on the project's download page that no major script revisions are being done for this project at the moment. A few years ago I was working on a synthesis retranslation - using the work of many authors (SkyRender, Lina Darkstar, KWHazit, etc.) and the original JFFVI scripts. I recently graduated from university and was considering starting the project back up. If you'd be interested in using the material, I'd be willing to make a regular commitment to this project. Let me know.

I appreciate the offer, VK, but that sentence in the description is a bit misleading.

There are two parts to the patch once it's done and everything is working (  ): the game improvement patch and the script improvement patch. The script improvement part is actually done (aside from fixing any typos or issues), and is a synthesis of the Lina Darkstar, KWHazit and FF6 Advance scripts. The problem is that this is completely dependent on the game improvement patch, which is stalled at the moment. I took a break due to the fact that whenever I would start the game up to do a comprehensive playthrough and make sure everything is working, I would pull a narco and nod off. The sleep situation has improved a bit, and I'm ready to get in here and polish this thing up.

tl;dr - I've already got one.

I'll change the description on my webpage though, and I'm sorry for any confusion.

[darkmage]

*sigh*
I'm having a rather large bug with the WoR Auction House, where the only two things that ever show up are the 1/1200 Airship, and the Imp Robot. Nothing else at all ever. It's very strange because the Imp-Robot is WoB only..

I'm starting to think it was one mblock129's Auction House patches because I know I have used them in the past, and had to resort to using the anti-patch for the Auction House Express one, because it was making only the Cure Ring show up forever after the 2 Espers >_< But this bug is still present after using the anti's, so I'm not too sure now.

Can anyone confirm or deny that this is a bug with the megapatch or not? And also, can someone please point me to any Auction House code that is non-event related, so I can compare data and see just what the heck is going on here? I'd really appreciate it.

mblock is correct - the only AH-related patch I included is the Zoneseek/Free Space patch. But I have not been able to do a complete playthrough to test WoR features (see post above). I should be able to start on that this evening; in the meantime, I'll go over the patch diff list to see if anything is being changed in that area.

[TheNattak]

Thank you very much, darkmage, that would be greatly appreciated.

[Leviathan Mist]

If you want me to do a complete playthrough of your current patch, I'd be happy to.

[darkmage]

If you wouldn't mind, that would be awesome! I'll still be doing a playthrough, but my time during the week to play is limited.

There are a few things I had in mind to try:

• Test some of the game-breaking fixes. Most of those have to do with Shadow in Sabin's scenario, but there's the hidden path in Locke's scenario and the Kutan-as-Celes glitch, as well as the airship Game Over exploit. The last one is a little extreme to try, but as long as you don't save normally, you could use save states to break that up. You should not be able to do any of these, so let me know if you can get them to work.
• Test the (few) events that can be done in either the WoB or the WoR, such as buying the Magicite at the Auction House, or from the guy in Tzen. I want to see if the problem TheNattak is having is isolated, or if there is something that was changed.
• Try to get as many items as possible, and make sure the item descriptions display properly. It was such a PITA to get those pointers done right, but still there were issues. Also, check spell descriptions and Esper bonuses to make sure they show up properly as well.

I'll be doing what I can as well, so if I get to any of these and test them I'll be sure to update the thread.

[Leviathan Mist]

If you wouldn't mind, that would be awesome! I'll still be doing a playthrough, but my time during the week to play is limited.

There are a few things I had in mind to try:

• Test some of the game-breaking fixes. Most of those have to do with Shadow in Sabin's scenario, but there's the hidden path in Locke's scenario and the Kamog-as-Celes glitch, as well as the airship Game Over exploit. The last one is a little extreme to try, but as long as you don't save normally, you could use save states to break that up. You should not be able to do any of these, so let me know if you can get them to work.
• Test the (few) events that can be done in either the WoB or the WoR, such as buying the Magicite at the Auction House, or from the guy in Tzen. I want to see if the problem TheNattak is having is isolated, or if there is something that was changed.
• Try to get as many items as possible, and make sure the item descriptions display properly. It was such a PITA to get those pointers done right, but still there were issues. Also, check spell descriptions and Esper bonuses to make sure they show up properly as well.

I'll be doing what I can as well, so if I get to any of these and test them I'll be sure to update the thread.

I don't know all of the "game-breaking" bugs you mentioned, so if you could compile a list of them and a brief description on how to activate them, that would help. Only the ones you want tested. Also, do you have the current version of the patch available anywhere?

[darkmage]

Here are descriptions of the game-breakers/sequence-breakers from the patches that fix them.

Shadow leaves a one-man party

This one fixes a bug in which Shadow can leave a party consisting of just Shadow, thereby freezing the game. To experience this (not that you'd want to!), here's what you do. After the Narshe battle (where Kefka raids Narshe and you have to fight them on the snowfield), make a party of just Gau, then go to hire Shadow's help at Kohlingen and trek back to the Veldt and ditch Gau (have him leap but then don't let him come back). Then, if you take Shadow past the gate of Narshe (or try to enter the secret passage), he will leave (as he would if you had other party members). This patch corrects that behavior by blocking Shadow's entry as usual, but you still retain control of him.

Airship/Game Over exploit

When you go aboard the airship while it is in flight, the game sets a flag that will put you in control of the airship the next time the overworld map is accessed. This flag, however, is not cleared when the game-over screen appears. As a result, it is possible to take control of the airship at any point in the game, depending on where the game is saved, and provided that the game is not interrupted once the flag is set, as it is not stored in SRAM.

There are two ways to trigger this bug. The first method involves the Floating Continent and imposes certain requirements, which are summarized as follows:

    Go aboard the airship from the overworld map, not the Floating Continent (may not be required).
    Go to the Floating Continent without going through the IAF sequence.
    Get annihilated on the Floating Continent.

These are the only two I can think of. And since I know the invisible tile fix in South Figaro works, there's no need to test the Kutan-as-Celes glitch...it isn't fixed.

I'll try to get to these tonight, and I'll PM you if I prove any of these before I hear from you. Thanks again for the assist! 

[darkmage]

On a somewhat-related topic, is there a generally recommended tool to use in making .ips patches? I've been using Lunar Magic, but the last few versions of my patch have jumped in size and I'm not sure why. I'd like to compare the results, but I don't know what's good or accepted.

[Leviathan Mist]

On a somewhat-related topic, is there a generally recommended tool to use in making .ips patches? I've been using Lunar Magic, but the last few versions of my patch have jumped in size and I'm not sure why. I'd like to compare the results, but I don't know what's good or accepted.

A patch can be rather large if there's a lot of shifted data there. If you moved stuff around in the ROM, that could be an explanation. It can also jump in size due to bytes being deleted. If the patch is almost as big as the ROM then that could be a possibility and you might wanna look into that. I use Lunar Magic, myself.

Do you have the most recent copy of the patch available for download? I need it if I wanna test it, I just recently got a new PC and none of my stuff is on here.

[darkmage]

Hmm. I'm not sure what would have changed so drastically between versions of my patch...I don't think I added a major change/fix patch that would account for 200k...

Do you have the most recent copy of the patch available for download? I need it if I wanna test it, I just recently got a new PC and none of my stuff is on here.

Sure, it's on my website. I haven't added your speed improvement patch yet, and there were a few things I had cleaned up (and want to clean up, like the garbled item descriptions) before I put a new version out.

[Lenophis]

On a somewhat-related topic, is there a generally recommended tool to use in making .ips patches? I've been using Lunar Magic, but the last few versions of my patch have jumped in size and I'm not sure why. I'd like to compare the results, but I don't know what's good or accepted.

If it was a spike of 2+ megabytes, you made a patch based on a headerless rom to a headered rom (source had no header, patched rom did). All of those changes will carry over, and that's bad.

[Leviathan Mist]

I have tested the Shadow leaves a one-man party and Airship/Game Over exploit using your complete patch, and both bugs appear to be fixed. I also looked at the descriptions for all 255 items, every magic spell, esper, lore, etc. and didn't see any bugs. I did see a bit of weirdness when talking to someone in Narshe though. There's a guy who has a word censored with symbols in the normal game, but those symbols are replaced with the wrong letters in the hack. Two screenshots are attached, one showing what it looks like in the hack, and the other showing what it looks like in the unhacked game. It looks like the @ and the % were replaced by the letters i and l respectively.

EDIT: I found another minor visual error in the Bushido list. Some of the Bushido names seem to be not aligned properly. The third screenie shows what I mean.

[darkmage]

On a somewhat-related topic, is there a generally recommended tool to use in making .ips patches? I've been using Lunar Magic, but the last few versions of my patch have jumped in size and I'm not sure why. I'd like to compare the results, but I don't know what's good or accepted.

If it was a spike of 2+ megabytes, you made a patch based on a headerless rom to a headered rom (source had no header, patched rom did). All of those changes will carry over, and that's bad.

Hmm. It wasn't that much - the 200k you had noticed a while ago. While I'm not seeing that big a jump, this does make me think of something to look at. My test ROM is headered, and though I believe I was careful enough to use headered versions of any patch that gave the option, I can't be 100% positive about it. That may also be the source of some of these weird glitches.


Here is an example - the Phantom Train patch I created - on a clean ROM - changed maybe 1k worth of data total: I rearranged 1 treasure event, 2 map tiles and freed up 9 bytes in the compartment event to allow the chests to appear, yet the .ips file size using Lunar is 194k.

[darkmage]

I have tested the Shadow leaves a one-man party and Airship/Game Over exploit using your complete patch, and both bugs appear to be fixed. I also looked at the descriptions for all 255 items, every magic spell, esper, lore, etc. and didn't see any bugs. I did see a bit of weirdness when talking to someone in Narshe though. There's a guy who has a word censored with symbols in the normal game, but those symbols are replaced with the wrong letters in the hack. Two screenshots are attached, one showing what it looks like in the hack, and the other showing what it looks like in the unhacked game. It looks like the @ and the % were replaced by the letters i and l respectively.

EDIT: I found another minor visual error in the Bushido list. Some of the Bushido names seem to be not aligned properly. The third screenie shows what I mean.

Good to know about the game and sequence breaker bugs. As far as the censored text, that might be due to the new VWF having different symbols in place for the opcode calling it. For example, "il" is actually one character. I'll have a look at that really quick.

That was it. The opcode for "@" is calling "il" instead. I changed it to "/", and that will be fixed in the next release.


As far as the Bushido names on the menu, I know what caused that. I'll fix it in the next release as well.