Messages

276

FF7 Tools / Official Proud Clod 1.0-1.4 Topic

« on: 2009-05-28 14:10:04 »

I think I was a big part of the proud clod related clutter . sorry i posted again in it, but i must have started posting when you put your post...

at least some of my ideas are catching peoples' eye... now if i keep it up i will be able to eventually have a nice hack to play

edit: damn... changing it's invisible flag didn't work, neither did it's dead unit flag (unsure of which of the two if either are activated when killed... know little of the death sequence), so i have to retype it into the post-attack thing.

edit2: nope... forgot that death happens before all but the death counter >_> have to try some other things to prevent invisibility

277

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-28 14:08:20 »

i know it'd be better, and i do plan on giving enemies life, but i'd like some enemies have an auto-life status under certain circumstances... and i did it, but the enemy is invisible (death animation happened, and stayed that way XD). gonna see if it will be visible by setting it to be visible, else i will put it in the post attack ai (found out it was an error on my part... still learning ).

thanks... i didn't know that my ideas were this good. if it helps, that is great, since the more ideas that are out there, the better the hacks can become . if you want to see some of my code as an example tell me and i will put some up here for reference.

also, nfitc1, it'd be nice if there were a copy/paste feature available for the ai editing, since it isn't fun to have to re-type long pieces of code when moving it around >_>.

278

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-28 13:19:35 »

I haven't tried battle dialogue yet, but i guess i can try it in my next little project, since a message would be nice to see anyway if an enemy is reviving itself.

edit: dialogue definitely works correctly, but my insta rezzing isn't... gonna move it from death counter to an hp checking post-attack script and see if that works. dunno the exact details about bringing someone to life, so im not too sure about it 

279

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-28 13:04:05 »

I'm not blind...., but I did forget that those were important info pieces. My current goal is to make this do everything to the scene.bin that Hojo won't. I already nearly obsoleted Teioh with WM 1.0 so I don't want to quash any more of Squall's accomplishments.

i said that I was blind not you

You have to make new animations for them if you don't want to use what they already have. Unless you can discover new anims. If you want, say, the machine gun attack anim to perform Fire, just change the Anim that is performed to match that of the machine gun's.

that is what i do not know how to do. i have no idea on how to make new animations for the enemy, or i'd be good to go.

now through the ai i have managed to make enemies cause status ailments to you when you attack them (at a random chance), give them auto statuses like protect/barrier, perform a damage taken check (as a general counter) to see how much damage they received from that attack, if any, and then automatically restore a %age of that damage (kinda like the ffta/2 damage absorb reaction ability) so that their actual life seems longer than it is, and if you are weak they last much longer, though if you are strong they still last more than their base hp (sans 1HKO) normally would, making your strength even more important. I'd like to make a reverse of that, where they heal less if you do lesser damage and heal more when you do more damage, so that the stronger you are, the more hp they gain, but i will likely just make enemies level as you do with similar stat growths as your characters, but that will be a long process to do and will take up much room in the ai unless i can compress it down some. even still that'd be a nice improvement in my opinion over set enemy strengths, and is another reason why I wanted to know about adding drops via ai, so that i could do this little trick. similar to ffviii enemy growing style, but making sure they stay challenging throughout.

tried to fix the MP's machine gun so that it actually dealt long range damage (does 1 hp when i am or it is in the back row, and 4 in the front) by temporarily setting their back row target's back row mod to 00 (front row) in the main, and setting it back to 01 in the post-attack script, though it still did 1 damage... i do not know how to make the enemy's direct attack do more damage (say... double) with direct multiplication (damage x 2 for instance) since there is seemingly no damage check that i can see, and i do not know if i can make the target suffer back attack damage in place of this (and to replace the non-working row change attempt).

i have plenty of ai room for the MP now, since i shrunk it's ridiculously high 861 byte ai down to a reasonable 67 byte ai doing essentially the same (kept the check for enemy row by targeting a random enemy and checking it's row and going form there), making it do more tonfa attacks on front row enemies and more gun shots on back row, removed specific row checks since it doesn't really need them (crappy move set anyway, so not really going to waste time adding that), as well as checking it's own row, though it is pretty easy to add that in (essentially -> if (self back row = 1) -> jump to back row enemy script (in which is the random mod for choosing the gun attack more commonly), and that would be all that is needed to change).

working on getting enemies to have auto-life, so that when they die they can come back to life one time (or more for some fights... make a minion always come back until the master is dead, then losing rezzing capability) or so, though it'd be pretty funny if phoenix could be summoned by the enemy . hopefully it goes as smoothly as everything else has been recently, since i am getting to know the ai programming pretty well.

280

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-28 03:04:57 »

it would be very nice if you would add the ability for the user to edit the enemy attack id's

I thought it could.... Do you have the newest version?

what i meant was the area in the scene.bin for the specific enemy's attacks it is able to use, as well as the animation it uses for the attack. normally the MP enemy has only two attacks that it is able to use, machine gun (0110), and tonfa (0111), and even if the attack data in the scene allows for more attacks for every enemy in the scene, they still have to point to the attack in their specific part of the file (in the enemy data section), and give an actual animation for the ability, else the game locks up. i meant it would be nice if you could change each specific enemy's attack pointers and animation pointers through PC so that it didn't have to be done through hex editing. i have the PC 1.0 version, and it does not have this feature, it would require being able to choose a specific enemy in the group to see their animation/attack pointers, and each would need room for all 32 pointers (16 for attack pointer, each at 2 bytes, 16 for animation, each at one byte).

for example:
MP                                   Guard Hound                      [EMPTY]
atk 1 [xxxx]  ani 1 [xx]        atk 1 [xxxx]  ani 1 [xx]        atk 1 [xxxx]  ani 1 [xx]
atk 2 [xxxx]  ani 2 [xx]        atk 2 [xxxx]  ani 2 [xx]        atk 2 [xxxx]  ani 2 [xx]
...                                    ...                                     ...
atk 16 [xxxx]  ani 16 [xx]    atk 16 [xxxx]  ani 16 [xx]     atk 16 [xxxx]  ani 16 [xx]

the [xxxx] being the editable hex boxes. there is definately nothing similar to this that i saw in PC, so i am assuming you forgot about it, or that i am just blind as to where it could be 

what all is needed to make an enemy, such as the MP, use, say the fire spell?

First of all you'll have to add the fire attack data to the scene attack data. You might want to have a side-by-side comparison to WM for this. The attack doesn't even have to be 100% the same as the "Fire" attack in the KERNEL.BIN, but if you want to have that spell exactly you'll probably want to copy it.
Second, you'll have to add a reference to it in the attacker's AI. Make sure they have enough MP to cast it or you'll get the "Not enough MP!!" warning. To do this you'll have to set the target and use 92 to perform the command. When it gets around to that spot in the AI it will then try to perform it.

what i meant here is that the enemy MP will not be able to use the fire spell normally (just by calling it in the ai) after setting it's attack/animation pointers to actually show the spell fire. the MP has only two attack animations (that i know of) written as 03 (machine gun attack) and 04 (tonfa attack), and nothing for any magical attacks (all versions (i think) of the MP, including palette swaps, have no animation for casting magic). if i give it any animation id (from the few i tried) past 04, it just sits there as if i didn't even set them to use the ability, and i believe that the earlier animations are for idle and hurt animations. however, if i set it to 03/04, it will use that normal attack animation, with no name, and do the fire spell's damage (though with no fire animation). what i was asking was how to make it so that they actually cast the fire spell on the enemy instead of doing a normal attack animation. would i need to actually create an animation for them in the battle.lgp file (which i have no clue how to do... kimera has issues reading them) allowing for spell casting?

the kernel is only loaded at the start of a new game

This is incorrect. The kernel is loaded when you load the game and is never re-loaded while you're actually playing. Saving, modding, and re-loading will reflect any changes you wish to make in the KERNEL.BIN.

i think i was thinking of using savestates in the psx version... my bad

281

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-27 05:45:33 »

Yeah, vista seems to either run pretty flawlessly (at times, until you hook up an emulator it doesn't like), or crap out whenever it is is very bad to have happen. xp has flaws, but nothing that can't be tweaked to get around (plenty of tweaking manuals out there for big performance boosts and better stability, though it is still more stable than vista   ). they are making it very hard to not get vista on your computer, when xp is obviously more reliable... if they used xp's stability and built from there instead of redoing everything, vista could actually be something worthwhile. meh... i just hate it  .

anyway, im going to get back to ai editing (have enemies up to the motor ball boss on the shinra highway stat edited), and hopefully find some of the unknowns out at some point, because there could be something good hidden in there ^^. also, on the side i'm going to be working on ffvi advance's enemies and ai hacking, since i know where the offsets for pretty much everything is (or at least a general idea... i did find the ai and enemies at least, as well as all the items), and may look into updating the ff3 (snes ffvi) editor which did prety much everything, since the two are programmed almost exactly the same way, just the advance one has more added to it, and much more room for possibilities. but i am in no real rush for ffvi, since i am already pretty far into hacking ffvii.



and another question for you nfitc1, would it be easily possible for you to allow for more than one character editor to pop up at a time from proud clod from different scenes (same scene.bin, different file within), so that i can easily compare ai from one enemy to another, and still be able to edit both enemy's ai? so if i wanted to compare MP from scene 76 (75 in proud clod) to the grenade combatant in 105 (104), i could see both of their ai at the same time in two separate windows, and add changes at will instead of having to use the current manual switch between widows, comparing what i wrote down (or screenshot), and then going back to make changes. this is the biggest issue others are smaller, such as the random errors when i forget to press enter when adding a value and then moving to a new square in the ai, and the top most block never seems to want to add a new row BELOW it if there is already stuff underneath it, making me have to move a ton around to add what i wanted to. adding the ability to chose where the empty blocks are added would be great. also, being able to resize the window, and have the rest of the things in the window actually resize with it would be nice, since the ai disassembled into C is usually pretty lengthy, and having to repeatedly scroll back and forth can be a pain.

not that i am complaining about it, it is wonderful having the (approximate) C equivalent makes coding and understanding much easier, especially when used in combination with terence's enemy mechanics guide, since it helps sort things out even more (and searching ai for certain examples is much easier with a search function ). but it does need some work (being the first proud clod release), and i think these are all good possible additions to make life easier (even though you will be the one to do the work to make it easier on us  ). if not, oh well, i am already used to the current version, but i wouldn't mind a more cushioned ai editing program *whistle*.

ok, to hopefully answer your problem, the kernel is only loaded at the start of a new game (i think anyway), so if you made it to a save point, saved, and reloaded after making changes, nothing would change, and previous changes would stick. try to run from a new game and see from there (installing the one YAMP patch, the gyptinstant patch i think, allows you to skip the intro movie to make things faster (ctrl+s), though it usually leads to the black screen glitch, but if you just go to the menu and come back it is fixed... and if you press it again you turn off the frame limit, or at least that is what happens for me, though it doesn't work in battle), and if not, then i do not know what is wrong... but likely vista

282

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-27 05:18:01 »

the only thing i can think of is you not having the Microsoft Visual Basic Power Packs 3.0 needed to run the newer one (dunno if the 1.1.7 needs them or not), or if you have windows vista, since it LOVES to cause utter chaos in many things (like when .exe's randomly started running only in notepad, so when i started up the computer, i got ~50 .txt files popping up on me...), which is why i custom ordered my quad core with xp on it ^^. i don't think it'd let you run WM without it though, so it could have been the pack not installing correctly, in which case you could always uninstall/reinstall them to see if it fixes it... i don't know the inner workings of WM like nfitc1 does (he made it), so i cannot give any other advice on why it wouldn't work. just try to reinstall the required stuff on the first page and then try it again on an unedited kernel file (a copy of your kernel works too) to see if it works.

283

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-27 04:56:01 »

if you are using wall market to edit the buster blade (get the newest version of wall market, since it does everything  ) then you should have no problem saving it. all you need to do is load your kernel with wall market, edit the things you want, click file->create kernel.bin, and that should replace the kernel you loaded with the modified one you made (back up your original first, though there is always an extra one on the install disk). i don't ever see wall market splitting up into many files unless you use the piece managing thing, and it isn't really necessary (it is for manual hex editing, but there isn't much need when you have wall market  ).

what i said about copying/pasting was to move your kernel (if it was not in the folder it should be, if you were editing one outside the main folder) into the place in the ffvii folder it is supposed to go in, but i didn't see the "it is spitting out pieces when i compile" thing. so unless i do not know what you are talking about, then the above should work.

on another side note, is there status checks (or whatever they are called) for allocating drops/steal items that are possible through ai, so that more items can be stolen (different or same), different drops for doing different things in battle, or checking if an item was stolen so the enemy gets pissed off (goo king from bof games anyone?). i know that was kind of hard to understand, so i will try to give some examples:

normally through ai, you can set/check certain things related to the enemy such as status problems, actual stats, exp/ap/gil, etc. by doing something similar to, say:
12    2060 -> self mask
00    4010 -> barrier
80            -> combine them together (self.barrier)
60    01    -> sets flag to active
90            -> combines (self.barrier = 1)

where the 4010 is the check for barrier, 42e0 for exp, etc. does anybody know what a check for dropped/stolen items are, how to set their chances, and how to reenable stealing (i.e. if item stolen = 1, item stolen = 0), or am i just dreaming here? because adding an enemy with anger issues when stolen from would be fun (get something really good from bosses, but they increase their aggression and pummel you to death), or giving an enemy multiple steals possible (a boss who puts up a barrier, and resists a ton of damage unless you steal his "battery" in which it goes down for a bit until he installs another... and i know i could have fun doing things with hojo's battle (human form)  ). but mainly i just want even more possibilities to be open, and i'm just curious about this, but having multiple steals for enemies is nice as well.

284

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2009-05-27 01:33:01 »

If you are going to import a file into a psx iso, you can use cdmage, but if the file becomes too large, it will truncate it, though i don't see the kernel getting bigger by much if any (though the scene.bin easily can, but if you have some decent programming knowledge, and know how to edit enemy AI, you will quickly see how badly much of the AI was written with a lot of unnecessary repetition, and shaving down on that saves some room ^^). if the file somehow becomes smaller, that is fine, since it will just add FF for the missing stuff. i was working on the psx version (before learning ai editing), but m scene file got too big so i moved to the pc version (cousin was kind enough to give me his ^^), but before that i had no trouble adding files to the psx iso with cdmage.

for a psx iso, when you open it you must chose m2/2352 track from the popup menu (else it will not read it right if at all), move to the directory on the iso that has the older file (the INIT folder), right click on the kernel (or whichever file you want to replace, such as the scene.bin, which is in the battle folder), and click import file. from there it will take you to a browser, so find your new kernel and click on it (it will warn you if it is too big or too small, though only too big is bad, unless you removed important parts from the kernel somehow), then it will quickly replace the old with the new, and you can test from there.

though for the pc version it is easy as copy and paste, and if you can't do that then i can't help you 

nfitc1, what all is needed to make an enemy, such as the MP, use, say the fire spell? from what i have seen, it is likely that it is a problem with their limited animations (only the tonfa attack and machine gun animations), that they lock up when trying to cast fire (camera moves like it is being casted, then sits there, requiring a ctrl+q exit), as when i set their attack animation (in the hex, setting both the attack and animation in the enemy data section correctly) to either of the two they are able to use, they can perform the attack, but it looks like their normal attack, no magic casted, but the damage is that of the fire spell, not very useful. now i was able to give a mono drive the vacuum ability (from bloatfloats) that shares the same animation index as fire, and it did show the vacuum attack right, and not the fire spell. i still need to test and see if the mono drive can use other spells (likely), and if it can then there must be something that has to be set in the animations of the enemy themselves.

So... how exactly can i change the enemy animations, since only ifalna can see their animations (errors when trying to edit), kimera will not even load the files, since they are "not a valid P file", and i know little about the hex for animations. hell, i'd settle for just a copy of their idle animation that i can call that has the ability to use magic, at least until i can learn more about adding animations. if you have any insight that would be wonderful.

also, some suggestions on your proud clod, it would be very nice if you would add the ability for the user to edit the enemy attack id's (what they can use ability wise) as well as the animations (that the moves use), so for example MP uses animation 03 for attack 0110 (machine gun attack), and 04 for 0111 (tonfa attack), since i have to manually extract the files and open them up in a hex editor to change something as small as that (i don't think any of the programs allow for this yet, so this could be a first, and shouldn't take much to do, since it is even less than what is already added, you'd just have to point to two different places per enemy). i'd also like to thank you for the ai editor, as it has been very useful, and the C format decoding of it helps out a lot (so i can see if i screwed up much easier  ), and paired with hojo and WM, things are going nicely ^^

sorry about the long post, but i tend to ramble on... if you could implement my suggestion, i'd really appreciate it (and likely many others as well). battle formations would be nice too, but i know they aren's completely known yet, but i can do enough to do what i need via hex for now (it is a lot, so changes are actually worthwhile to manually hack, unlike changing two values  ). and if you can help with my problem, i'd appreciate that as well.

Edit: gave mono drive ice, but the camera doesn't seem to follow through right... ice is finished before it fully pans over to cloud, but that could be due to the speed at which it casts spells (takes about half the time cloud does to get the spell off, which could explain it), and i even edited the spell's camera movement in WM to fire (which it uses correctly), but it was still off by a good bit... maybe it has something to do with me having a mono drive battle happen after the MP's are killed, or maybe something else?

285

Troubleshooting / Re: FFVII starting problem (solved)

« on: 2009-05-02 14:16:11 »

ok, i have now found the sloution to this problem, it was not the driver that did it (in fact, my vertex shaded problems are now fixed in hardware mode with dox's drivers XD), it was zonealarm that caused the problem. the invisible popup during the start of the game was apparently one of it's allow/deny notifications, and having game mode on solved the problem by choosing "always allow". my keys all worked, and i was successfully able to run the game with no problems (other than any normal problems ffvii will probably have >_>).

for those who had the same problem starting as me, check to see if there is a similar mode in your firewall, or if it is zonealarm you have, problem solved already XD. also, if anybody with a nvidia 8xxx card, and are experiencing the black character (vertex shaded area) problem, try out one of dox's customized forceware release drivers, as it has fixed my issue.

i guess i just had to experiment more on my end than just the usual things... i didnt expect zonealarm to be the culprit, but i guess i learned from that mistake.

edit: whoops, forgot mine was the last post, or i'd have just modified it *facepalm*

286

Troubleshooting / Re: FFVII starting problem (i have searched for a few hours with no working fix)

« on: 2009-04-29 22:11:26 »

yeah i was thinking about it... i have the drivers that they worked with last, but i'd have to reinstall the drivers any time i wanted to play ffvii, and reinstall the newer ones for anything else >_>

i would have hoped you, of all people would have more advice... too bad :'(

i'll install them in a little while and come back here with the results. however with those drivers, i have either the black texture problem with hardware, where all of the vertex shaded things are black, or i get slow movies in software... cant win for losing i guess.

287

Troubleshooting / FFVII starting problem (solved)

« on: 2009-04-28 21:43:46 »

ok, to start off, the game will start up, but remain black, no sound or music. if i press enter, it sometimes makes a sound similar to that of an error message (i think a dialog box is popping up with an error of some kind, but i cannot see it to figure out the problem, even setting my desktop's resolution to it's lowest, to try and see if the box was just outside of the resolution's view didnt work), then continues to play the eidos/square/credits movies.

the thing here is that none of the buttons work at this point, except the right mouse button, which acts as the enter button, and kicks me to the new game/continue screen, where i can advance no farther, even with a save file (the pointer hovers over continue at the start, and no buttons other than the right mouse button works, so no progress can be made). I even have a numpad on my laptop's keyboard (like any regular desktop keyboard, no fn button required to use them), and none of the buttons will work in the game, but do outside of the game, with or without num lock on. i have tried the laptop patch, to no avail. also, i cannot initially alt+f4 out of the program, until after i press enter to see the eidos movie, and if i press ctrl+q, the quit screen comes up, but i get stuck there, and not even alt+f4 gets me out, but alt+f4 works fine to exit.

ok, here are some things i have tried to solve this issue:
1. removed all codecs, and started from scratch, first only using the truemotion 2.0 codec, then adding the k-lite later and trying then.
2. removed gabest's avi splitter
3. tested out the game with lowered hardware acceleration, as well as sound acceleration in dxdiag
4. reinstalled ffvii multiple times
5. tried running in software, as well as in every combo of the nvidia setting in 1.02 config
6. tried the original (not 1.02) exe/config
7. put all of my movies on my hard drive, and had them successfully run (still with above issues, but they DID run)
8. tried pretty much every key combo possible, and only the ones to exit the program (after pressing enter to get rid of the dialog box), and the right mouse button work
9. all the movies play in MPC, so i know all the movies work, and in-game shows that as well
10. tried to run in windowed with cetra, to see if the dialog box appeared so i could see it there, but oddly the box didnt appear, and the game ran on its own, but black bars occurred in the movie, and keys still didnt work
11. tried various nvidia settings, such as disabling sli/physx, using rivatuner to disable 8-bit palletted textures, and disable AA
12. added the upside down patch in the hopes of somehow fixing the problem
13. multiple other things that i cannot remember off the top of my head

note: i have had this game working before a while ago, but with things constantly being added, such as newer drivers, my current ones being needed for performance in other games, many things could be at fault (probably drivers though, or some weird codec issue, though the movies and sound runs fine, and as of yet no graphical errors).

Before i resort to downgrading my driver to one that i know worked with ffvii, i was hoping for some more ideas on how to fix this problem. no patches were added at all, other than the updated config/exe, but that is all. i had originally thought it was from the PRP patch, which i had added before (put on all of my normally added patches, except for the PRP, which i had substituted for the reconstruction one), but after uninstalling everything and then starting from a clean install, the problem remained. If you can give any insight into the solution/cause of my problem, i would be thrilled, since i am trying to hack ffvii to be harder, yet the scene.bin file became too big to import back into the iso, and i cannot figure out how to make it so i can add the larger file and still run the game (got it to run once, but battles wouldnt start >_>), so i fell back onto the pc version.

PC specs:
windows xp sp3
intel core2 quad q6700 @ 2.66ghz
4gb ram
dual nvidia geforce 8700m gt (dox optimised 185.68 drivers), sli capable

my computer is definitely capable of handling ffvii, but since somebody did a craptastic porting job, as well as nvidia's lovely old game support (not), i have had, as well as many others, a super phun tyme solving all of it's problems. if you could fix this issue, i would make you my hero of the week