[FFVII] Is it possible to alter actor AP worth from a battle script?

[Husbjörn]

I noticed that the experience and gil rewards for defeating an enemy can be altered by changing its 0x42e0 and 0x42c0 values.
this page similarly suggests that tha AP value resides at offset 0x42b0.
It however turned out that changing this value has no discernible effect at all. I first thought that it might be that something else has the final say in what the AP value will be, but upon checking the value stored at Actor<word>[0x42b0] with the following simple counter script, it appears that this isn't even set to the actor's AP value as set in scene.bin at all:


0000| 02    2060        # Push self mask value
0003| 02    42B0        # Push AP reward offset value
0006| 80                # Resolve AP reward value of self and push it onto the top of the stack (as a 16-bit word)
0007| 61    03E8        # Push constant 16-bit word value (1000; corresponds to actor AP value set in scene.bin)
000A| 40                # Push true if the top values of the stack (popped) are equal, or false otherwise
000B| 70    0015        # Jump to offset if the values were not equal
000E| 93    "Equal\0"
0015| 93    "Not equal\0"
0026| 73


Memory scanning further reveals that the actual location of the AP value once loaded into RAM is always 15 bytes prior to the gil value, which is 4 bytes wide and followed immediately by the EXP value, occupying another 4 bytes. It is off course possible that the actual memory used by the process does not reflect the actor-data offsets used by the 0x80 instruction and no, altering the value at Actor<word>[0x4248] does not change the AP value either.


Is the memory offset suggested by the above wiki link incorrect or is something else at play here? Any thoughts or theories?

Edit: and what the heck, when previewing this post I notice that it automatically shows "off course" as "off course" even though it doesn't say that in the textarea I submitted? Some easter egg trolling? 
Edit 2: apparently it happens in the final post as well; just to be clear "of course" is spelled with an "of" not an "off", unless you want the whole meaning changed... x)

[Sega Chief]

So THAT'S what's going on. I thought it was odd that everyone was suddenly saying 'off course' all of a sudden, but I figured it was just some trend that had caught on 'cause of that Battle Square typo. Should it be changed, though? No, way!

[Covarr]

So THAT'S what's going on. I thought it was odd that everyone was suddenly saying 'off course' all of a sudden, but I figured it was just some trend that had caught on 'cause of that Battle Square typo. Should it be changed, though? No, way!

Nah, I added it to the board's word filter.

[Husbjörn]

Haha, I see. I wasn't aware of such a typo in the battle square, might have to go re-explore now.

As for the actual topic in question it unfortunately doesn't seem like the AP value can be changed from a script; I used the following to brute force change most any non-animation related actor value and still it stays the same:

Code: [Select]

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73
Might have to go off the course then... 

[DLPB_]

  haha

[nfitc1]

I typed up an actual answer to this question, but it appears to have gotten lost.

No. You cannot dynamically change AP values through AI. It only reads from the entry in the scene.bin file. Severely missed opportunity there. It would be really cool to have enemies change state and be worth more AP when in "magically charged." EXP and Gil can still be edited though, but I don't think EXP is ever changed in vanilla.

[Husbjörn]

Missed opportunity indeed!
Out of curiosity, does any encounter have a non-static gil reward? (I haven't actually played through the game in ages).

[nfitc1]

Missed opportunity indeed!
Out of curiosity, does any encounter have a non-static gil reward? (I haven't actually played through the game in ages).

An enemy called TrickPlay does this action called Gold Mountain that increases dropped gil by 800 every time it does it. I don't think there's another example in all of the vanilla game that does this for gil or EXP, but both should be possible.

[Husbjörn]

An enemy called TrickPlay does this action called Gold Mountain that increases dropped gil by 800 every time it does it. I don't think there's another example in all of the vanilla game that does this for gil or EXP, but both should be possible.

Ah yes I remember that one, though I don't think I ever realized that increased the dropped gil. That's pretty cool!

[DLPB_]

I never did either, but that's because gil is WAY too easy to come by... totally breaks the mechanics.

I am thinking of making it so that only bosses drop it (from the enemy side) in my difficulty mod.  Certainly I won't allow huge gil gains.