Dragon Zombie's Pandora's Box (Editing)

[quantumpencil]

I was wondering if anyone knows how to make the attack re-castable; I'd like to have all DZ's cast it in my current mod.

Thanks in Advance.

[Kudistos Megistos]

You have to edit his AI using Proud Clod. In his "death counter" script, there is a reference to a global variable which asks whether the spell has already been cast or not. I imagine that everything will work the way you want if you remove the references to the global variable and have him use Pandora's box as a normal attack. I'm not sure of this, however, since I haven't played with AI for a while...

[nfitc1]

You have to edit his AI using Proud Clod. In his "death counter" script, there is a reference to a global variable which asks whether the spell has already been cast or not. I imagine that everything will work the way you want if you remove the references to the global variable and have him use Pandora's box as a normal attack. I'm not sure of this, however, since I haven't played with AI for a while...

Yup. That's correct. You only really need to change one byte. Change line 0x021 from

60  01

to

60  00

That prevents the global variable "Pandora's Box Cast" from being set to "true" so any future Dragon Zombies will always think it has never been cast.

[quantumpencil]

Thank you; by the way, I'm pretty new to this, but I'd really like to start learning to write these AI scripts; do you have any resources you'd suggest?

[Bosola]

Yes. Use my Welder thread. The whole idea was that we'd write AI templates, so you don't have to.

[quantumpencil]

Checking it out now; thanks.

I've another question, involving animations. I'm trying to create some new Materia for the PSX version, using Wall Market, and certain animations work, while others which I'd like to use, seem to not come through properly.

For instance, I'm trying to make an Aero Materia, and I want to use the "great gale" animation for Aerora, however, when I set the animation index, nothing happens. I cast the spell, and the game doesn't crash, but there is no attack animation, and no one is affected.

I've been using an index of B5. 85 = 55 in hex, so that gives me an absolute animation index of B5 on the PSX, unless I'm mistaken.

[Bosola]

Just because the animation index is correct doesn't mean it'll actually work. Many animations, used in player spells, plain fail to appear; several cause the game to crash; others look completely bizarre. It's often a matter of trial and error, unfortunately - finding out that Waterball works but, say, Hell Bubbles won't. Several seem to refer to model data not relevant for player characters.

IIRC, my own Aero materia for Rebirth uses Resist - Tornado - Aero3 animations. Or it may use Poisona instead - one of them's a bubble. Water materia relies on waterball / tsunami / aqualung.