Incidentally, how did you get an opcode list for the scripting tokens if you don't know what they all do?
I asked lasyan3 this very question. He said that he had a program that *PLAYED* the field files(!) he had recieved it from someone else. Lasyan3 took apart the player and found the opcodes inside. He then wrote a program to dump the opcodes.
I'm just using his specifaction. The debug room is *AMAZING* as it exersizes all the opcodes in one way or another. That's what all the characters that do "wierd stuff" do. For example the honey bee inn girl changes the color of you windows. It's not because there's somethig screwed up with the debug room. It's because it's a function of the windowing system and they were resetting the corners.
Some blank windows arn't blank, even when you have a tiny square that can't even hold a single character. It just a quick two command display (WINDOW/MESSAGE) to show a flag has been set.
What's even cool is that there are *DISABLED* menu sections that with the changing of one opcode, you get a whole slew of new menus. This is really nitty gritty stuff the CD-ROM emulation check (A throw back to when you had a dev-psx that sat as an ISA card in a PC. You could emulate the CD-ROM on a hard drive's subdirectory.)
Now I only have a program that dumps the PSX scripts. It still has a buch of bugs where jumps are not quite calculated right, and some script files refuse to load. I've been going through each one of the BLACKBGx debug rooms, dumping them, and looking at the commands. Each character has a really shot script that's only about 10-20 lines long, as opposed to the opening sequence which is around 500. It's pretty asy to find out what's happening in context. I've been putting my findings in gears.
I would ADORE someone to make a PC version of the script dumper, that way all you guys can start messing with the PC script files, changing values, and seeing what changes.
In a perfect world I want to have a full script command listing in gears with arguments, kind of a "hacker's guide" the the middle with some example code.
I have the beginnings of a "cookbook" that has code snippits of common functions. (swapping characters, adding items, stopping sound, asking for a disk change, turning the menu selections on and off)
Sadly I have no way to re-insert the code back in the game as I can't seem to make an ISO of my FF7 disk. After I finish my dumping of the debug rooms, I will have to manully change hex numbers to alter the commands to see what the arguments do. That is unless a PC script dumper/reinserter is availible by then.
Why would you remake FF7 for PC of it looks exactly the same? Or is it going to be designed so it can be easily improved or something...
The original FF7 PC does not run on modern architectures. (WinXP for example) and is plauged with bugs. Actually, I can only say the the high-res menu module and the correct texture projection is the only redeeming factors of the PC port, and even that's not very good.
It's also an excuse to unify the PSX and PC versions. On top of this, we will need to make tools beyond this and could create editors to create custom content.
It also allows me to flex my documentation abilities. If you look at how Gears looks and how my last doc looks (The PSX documentation project) you can see a world if difference in my writing.
Anyway I have to find the code for the sailor in Matsu's room....
