I've been working on the physical limitations that FFIVET presents as far as Equipment display goes. I upped the fixed length limit from 8 to 10 (and I eventually want to throw a linebreak in there, raising it to 20, but that's not what I need help with). The routine is fairly simple once you look at it a bit. It will take a value from a table, do some math to it, and use that value to determine where to load from. Here's an example:


16 is the value for "Darkness Sword", it grabs that, does that bit of math, and then the Y value (64 after those) is used to determine the location. However, that routine limits itself to the 9 spaces (8 characters and the icon for the item). So after talking to DMM, it was decided that simply turning that ADC into two extra ASL As would increase the amount to 32 per entry (though I can edit the fixed length routine to stop after the 10 or 20 characters, then skip to the next 32 character entry, get it?).

It all works, wonderfully. However, for some strange reason, the weapons are loading one entry too high. For example, instead of Cecil starting with the "Dark Sword" he starts with the "Rune Staff", but it's stats are the same as the Dark Sword. Here's a screenshot to show:

http://dsrh.hokuten.net/ffivexp1.png

Is there anything that could cause that (note, the items, weapons, armor, etc... they all use the SAME routine)? I'm kinda lost there. I checked a trace of the original, the expanded original, and the asm alterations. All the same.

Edit: I forgot to show the edited code.


Before someone jumps in and goes "The X values are different!" it's because it's loading the "Darkness Helm".

~DS

I'll try it, but it doesn't make sense to me. The ADC being off wouldn't affect the original weapon that's loaded (the 16, which is the number for Dark Sword), it would just make it be $01 off.

~DS

I thought by one off you meant 1 character off. If it's a whole item index off then you got another problem.

Forget about the ADC thing. Your calculations are correct unless your index is 16 per item. I'm pretty sure you made it 32 though. Basically your other value is off some. The LDA $XXXX,x that loads the characters with x. So just adjust that first constant number until it is the right value. Then, if the other items line up also you got it.

Yeah, I moved the table into expanded space.

The only other thing I've done thus far, besides changing the math section of that routine, is change the routine for loading the items themselves, and only by one instruction.

Originally there was an LDA #$08 that would be stored somewhere to determine the length of each item. I changed it to LDA #$0A for 10 characters instead of 8. Other than that, I've done nothing.

And the strange thing still is, if this were a problem with my ASM, it would effect everything since it uses the same routine. It wouldn't just screw the weapons list up. >.>

Anyone else have any ideas?

~DS

Nightcrawler is right. We don't solve our own problems through critical thinking alone. We use trace files. They explain everything.

I figured it out. Always the stupidest simple solutions.  :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

I dumped the fixed item list using WindHex (yeah, I should've used one of the other tools. I usually do, but I felt lazy the day I did it. Never, ever again!). For some reason, it didn't include the blank entry between the last weapon and first piece of armor. Once I included that, everything worked just fine.

However, I'm still having the empty equipment space trouble. I figured out more about the routine and I found that the place where the first entry ($00) is should be blank for that to work correctly. That address is $227FE0 (SNES format), but when I try to use Geiger to go to that address, it takes me to $22FFE0. I threw in 32 spaces, and reloaded the game. Blank equipment spaces worked fine. However, when I saved the ROM, and tried it in ZSNES, it came up all screwed up again.

This time, it seems that it is an error caused by expansion. How do I go about fixing something like this? Should I try moving the item list location around until I find a space that won't be overwritten at reset?

~DS

You should have started with your first index being the blank one. Then you wouldn't have to move this base index back like that. Anyways, I'm pretty sure you are looking for 22FFE0 so it will loop back around. I would suggest moving all your items up 1 index and just setting that to 228000. That's the way it should have been done in the first place.