First off, let me apologize for there is no category fitting for what I am about to present(perhaps a proposition or chat category?). But bear with me until the end.
I’d like to introduce myself formally; up until now I’ve mostly lurked (on Serenes) reading docs, misc questions and whatnot. I’ve asked a few questions, well, really nothing major is my point. Really, I suppose you could say that I’ve just been learning various part of hacking. So now I’m formally entering the community(since this new board seems to be like the start of a new age for FEHacking). So here I am. Yay!
Now the thing is, I think my previous inactivity might be from how I don’t want to or believe that I can undertake a large project; I don’t think I could maintain the interest over that long of a period. Furthermore, my artistic skills are kind of beyond help. So if I were to do a full-length hack, all of music, animations, portraits… all original or missing. And I just don’t think I can muster the dedication to keep to a project for long.
And yet, I want to code more for FE and especially practice my assembly skills. I’m confident that I can code something, though my debugging and finding the right routines to replace can use some work. So my proposition is this: if anyone would like to work with me or have me work on snippets of assembly code, either with me being the learner and learning from you, or me just doing something for you who don’t know assembly, just let me know; this is the kind of hacking I am suited for. Though if I need to debug/disassemble some routine I might need help or pointers on where to look.
Uh, stuff I’ve actually done… not much… I wrote routines one time(as an experiment) to calculate the cost it would take to fix all weapons in a character’s inventory and write it to RAM, check that against gold the player has, then in events allow the player to decide if they want to fix them(also displaying the cost in ASCII), then fix the weapons and take the gold. Also some other misc stuff to practice ARM syntax. But really that’s really it.
Anyway, just reply with things that would be cool if they were done and coded. I’ll try my best, and I hope to expect guidance in return.
Suddenly all these assembly hackers are crawling out of the woodworks! Where were you people when we needed you?! I’m definitely intrigued, though I’m personally not in any need of any assembly hacks that haven’t been assigned to people already. I’ll definitely keep you in mind, though.
Oh hey, I have an idea. How about this: an assembly command that can be called through events that increases a character’s stats? Similar to how it’s done in FE4, but I would say that no stat screen is required, only the standard “Mag increased!” or “Str increased!” would be necessary. How does that sound in terms of difficulty?
And another one, now that I think about it. An assembly condition that checks to see what a unit’s current movement is, including whether or not that movement is blocked off by enemies, the idea behind this being that there can be a condition made that checks if a unit is surrounded or not.
@Agro
So for the first one, like using a, say, Energy Ring, except not from items, just from events? I could do that(though I think the popup notification would be an events thing). If so I can do that rather easily.
I’m not sure what you mean by the second about checking movement. The first thing that comes to mind is to just check the map to see if the spaces surrounding the unit are occupied(I’d have to find where it stores what unit is in what position again, but I could do it that way). And I recall reading somewhere on Serenes about how FE7 calculates its movements(I believe it uses Dijkstra’s), but a) I forgot who posted it and b) I’d need some guidance in finding the routine that does that and how it’s stored. Or like, I could do it from ground up and completely rewrite the algorithm for finding where the unit can move and see if it’s more than one space. Actually, wait, that doesn’t sound so difficult since there are only 4 spaces to check. Again, though, I’d need to find that place in ram where it stores where things are on the map. (Or I could go by the inefficient method of looping through all deployed units and finding where each are deployed :P)
Oh yeah, I have a bad(possibly good) habit of thinking as I type, so I mean, it offers more cluttered posts but also lines of thought all can refer back to.
Oh, welcome! It’s always nice to see new assembly hackers around!
Question: would something like “dealing a certain amount of damage to units in a certain area” be doable?
Lame example: you have a meteor falling in area [00,00] - [04,04] and all the units in that area take 30 damage.
I’ll have to dig around for a bit to figure out where the game keep a map of coordinates–>Units again(I remember finding it before! But unfortunately by harddrive crashed a while back :. If anyone else has it in their notes, please let me know), Or like, I can just loop through all the units to see which are in the area.
But in short, yes I think I can do that. I’ll try coding some of these wonderful suggestions tomorrow.
For the stat-up text thing, I don’t think you can call that textbox through events. Of course, there’s the brown box but that one fades in rather than simply appearing. It’s not a huge issue but it would be a nice thing to have.
For the second one, I suppose I should clarify: I want the game to be able to check if a unit is surrounded. I imagine a way to do this would be to check movement, but of course I don’t actually know.
@Crazycolorz5
What in the hell, where are you mystical people coming from? XD
I don’t know, I suggested an idea earlier to @Icecube regarding scaling range for archers/mages(IE the range would begin at 2-2 for archers and as their Skill+Strength stat increases, their range also does, capping at 2-4 for normal bows and 2-5 for longbows).
also piggybacking off of @Agro; possibly a forced level up would be interesting as well? Similar to how the juna fruit is supposed to work in FE8.
Anyway, I just wanted to say welcome; I don’t know where you came from but I think you should hang around for a while!
It’s pretty exciting to see all of these people coming out of the woodwork.
Support for crossbows? This was my proposal based on BwdYeti’s method, something I’ve always wanted to see done. Changes Damage and Hit calculations to enable Crossbow weapons: Damage = (Mgt * (2.5 for T1 or 3 for T2)), instead of (Str+Mgt). Hit = (Str+Skl) instead of (Skl2). Can assign this to specific classes (which would override the formula for all bows, for crossbows as a class), or to specific weapons (for crossbows as a subtype of bow).
So just throw out suggestions? What about the Valkyrie staff? (staff that revives unit from the dead, that may be stupid hard and not worth the effort though lol, IDK if the game even stores the stats and stuff of dead units) loooool probably not worth the effort. I’m not entirely serious here.
Aside from my not entirely serious suggestion, I feel that GBA FE could use AoE attacks (Kamon’s suggestion)
Guys, I told you, I’ve lurked for a long time. I guess it’s just motivational to see a good, new organization of hackers. @dancer_A That sounds ridiculously difficult, but the hard part is tracking down the correct routines to replace. I’d imaging it’d be somewhere in the battle calculations, which i think Nintenlord has documented somewhat of. I can simulate a level up, but I don’t know in the slightest how to call the little window. Then again, I think there’s some documentation on that as well. I’ll read over some docs and get back to you on that. @Arch Pretty much same as above. I imagine it wouldn’t be too difficult to change battle calculations to check for a skill on a class and modify damage/accuracy. It’d help immensely if you could show me the code for that -15range thing I saw on your youtube; it has to change something with the battle window(namely, whatever shoves the accuracy into there) and I wonder if it’s implicit based on the battle calculations of it they have a separate subroutine. Crossbows as a separate item type seems more difficult since there’ weapon levels and such to account for.
Anyway, at least hopefully my random spouting of “information it would be great to have”/ “Stuff I find while digging through peoples’ docs” will help you with knowing what documentation you still need to pull out and organize.
Edit: @L95 I think there have been people who have tried to create revive staves before, so I won’t attempt that. Yeah, i think it has shenanigans to do with how the game stores the data of dead units. AoE as actual attacks would be difficult. I’d imagine it’d be possible if someone has figured out how to attack ASM to weapons, but I don’t think I’ve heard of that before. It someone has, please let me know! (Maybe analyze how the game implements Runesword/Light Brand(Edit: http://forums.feshrine.net/index.php?showtopic=5224&hl=item+effects thank you icecube)? Are those just hardcoded into battle calculations?). I believe Kamon was talking about AoE as an event, like, step on a certain tile in the forest and it collapses, dealing X damage to everyone in some 3x3 area and destroying terrain or something. (Also, I don’t think I can kill units with this since unit death isn’t checked within events and I don’t know how to force that).
Edit2: @Agro Maybe I could try disassembling some of the item codes and figure out how they call it up. If I remember properly, Blazer has done some work on how items actually execute stuff? So I can probably start my investigation there.
@AlfredKamon I was thinking to just make 1 a low cap; if they would go to 0 or below set it to 1. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but death from 0 HP isn’t checked until combat, right?
I’m not 100% sure, but I remember having 0 HP zombies that got killed as soon as they faced someone in battle, so I’d say yes. But again, it was such a glitchy situation, so don’t take my words for granted
Oh, that’d be really sweet! The 1 HP low cap, I mean. If you could do that, it’d be perfect! (in FE8, btw)
Hahah, FE8. I’ll code it for FE7, but from what I’m thinking it would probably just be a small change for FE8(the RAM offset of character data and Map stuffs). But I still would need to figure out map stuffs.
@AlfredKamon I can’t say I’ve played your hack myself (I haven’t actually played that many hacks… lol), but I’ve watched MarkyJoe’s reviews of it on Youtube and I like what i’ve seen of it!
@Crazycolorz5 I just remembered something–awhile back I had Hextator make me a hack in which any weapon designated with “Magic” in the item editor reads from the Resistance stat to calculate damage. However, the hack is incomplete to a certain extent as staves still calculate from the Str/Mag stat, as does staff range when the range is MP/2. I wondered if you might be able to complete it for him? I can link you to his docs if you like.
Thank you very much! ^^
Yeah I like what Marky did in those videos, I think he kinda kept intact the spirit of the hack. That doesn’t happen in every LPs. It doesn’t mean that other LPs/reviews are bad, though. I appreciate all of them.
/ offtopic
Sorry, I don’t quite understand. You mean you want staves to use resistance to determine range? I think I have a link to his docs, but in case we’re thinking of different parts of his docs, link me anyway, please.
Unfortunately I don’t know how to help