FF1 hacking utility

[SixthFlyingFighter]

I wanted to make a few changes to FF1. They should be pretty simple, provided I have a decent hacking utility. Otherwise I'll have to use the corruptor approach and wind up consuming over a week and getting very little, if anything at all, done, before I get impatient and give up. And that would suck.

[Old Manus]

You missed the 'Dear Diary' bit at the start

[SixthFlyingFighter]

Or maybe you missed that I was trying to ask for a link to one.

[Dragonfire]

The best you can get for simple changes (maps, encounters, items, spells, etc) is FFHackster... look it up on google or something... you'll find it quick...

Other than that there's not much you can do, unless you know how to hex edit... but even then theres not much you can accomplish before corrupting the rom. The problem with editing the rom is that you can't do anything other than the things i listed above, because you cant go over the original size (i believe FF1 is like 128 or something), and you can't go over the character limit (ie. making an item name longer, requires shortening another).

If you want to make an edited FF1... get mihilas' RM2K3 source code for FF1 and edit that in rm2k3. Though I'm not sure if he locked it or not.

[DJZen]

You'd be shocked at how much wasted space there is in FFI. In my own experiences with FFHackster I've found that most of the time you don't even need to shorten things if you want to make certain item names longer, you just have to optimize them. FFII is actually even worse when it comes to that, but that's beside the point. The point is, if you run through the dialog a few times and just re-type it, a LOT of the text will be replaced with DTE (which, if you didn't know, means the game stores two letters as one, this is usually done with common letter combinations, it's VERY economical). This will free up a mind boggling amount of space. The really good thing is that FFHackster shows you how much free space you have left in the ROM. I haven't been able to get the map editor fully figured out yet, which is the only thing stopping me from releasing my hack of the game.

[ljkkjlcm9]

I have this problem where when I edit the Titan Tunnel Map, it messes up the Imp monster sprite, and when I fix the Imp monster sprite, it messes up the grass battlefield background, and when I fix that, it messes up Titan's tunnel, therefore something always has to be wrong and I don't have any idea how to fix it, otherwise, I've completely redesigned the map, added secret areas, and made knew character sprites and classes!

THE JACKEL

[DJZen]

Yeah, I suspect maps are touchy because of not just boundary boxes but also in game events, things like that. There's probably a specific size that most maps need to be (and by size I mean memory taken up) in order to function properly, since back in the NES days they literally tried to cram every last bit in that they could, so many things wound up getting squeezed uncomfortably close to each other, meaning if you make one thing too big, it oversteps its addressed boundaries and into something else's address, so making a map too big could easily screw up a monster "sprite" (although the monsters aren't sprites, they're all background layer tiles).

[SixthFlyingFighter]

OK, the hints DJ gave me are great, but I've been unable to find a UNIX binary for FFHackster.

[ljkkjlcm9]

Yeah, I suspect maps are touchy because of not just boundary boxes but also in game events, things like that. There's probably a specific size that most maps need to be (and by size I mean memory taken up) in order to function properly, since back in the NES days they literally tried to cram every last bit in that they could, so many things wound up getting squeezed uncomfortably close to each other, meaning if you make one thing too big, it oversteps its addressed boundaries and into something else's address, so making a map too big could easily screw up a monster "sprite" (although the monsters aren't sprites, they're all background layer tiles).

no cause see, it tells you the space that you have, and I know I'm well within the limits of that space, so that's what confuses me, I'm under the max by quite a bit in every aspect of the game, so I don't know why it keeps happening!?!?!?!

THE JACKEL

[SixthFlyingFighter]

no cause see, it tells you the space that you have, and I know I'm well within the limits of that space, so that's what confuses me, I'm under the max by quite a bit in every aspect of the game, so I don't know why it keeps happening!?!?!?!

THE JACKALIt doesn't edit the boundaries. You make the TT map a little too big, and it intrudes on the Imp image's space. The overall space taken up is the same, but TT map data is getting drawn like tile data.

[DJZen]

OK, the hints DJ gave me are great, but I've been unable to find a UNIX binary for FFHackster.

That's because god hates UNIX using infidels.









...I mean...





That's because nothing ever gets released for UNIX.







...Because god hates it.

[boys from the dwarf]

That's because god hates UNIX using infidels.









...I mean...





That's because nothing ever gets released for UNIX.







...Because god hates it.
whats





up





with





that?

[SixthFlyingFighter]

Meh.

Coming soon: TIAMAT FF1 hacking utility for Python.

Most Linux comes with Python.

[DJZen]

whats





up





with





that?

It's an extended pause. Like a pause that's even stronger than an elipsus. It also denotes a message not intended to be read immediately.