Shining Force Central

Glad to see you are still up and about here, Rubix - you legend

The Editor has so many new features from when I first crafted the "Shining Force Challenge Mod" for SF-1, several years back now ...I'm highly tempted to go back in and possibly touch up a few things with the Mod, for a more or less "final" edition of it, seeing how well regarded it has been here.

That said, I'm curious if I can simply take my existing "save file" and apply the new Editor features to it, or if I'd need to start from scratch ? I recall a feature from years ago allowed you to "expand the memory" of the game files, to a certain extent - that allowed for new spell icons, and so forth, but you were still bound to a certain number of characters for the monster names, for example. Like...you could change Slime to "Slim" (saving one letter) and thus add that letter to another monster - say "Beast" could become "Beasty" (adding the extra letter you saved from Slime, as a "y")... for example...but you could never go beyond that original "total letter number"- or the game would crash / freeze when you tried to play, if it would even load at all.

Has that limitation been overcome ? (or the limit on only being able to use the number of "Monster slots" in a given battle, that it originally had in the base game. Like..if a battle had 18 monsters in it normally, you could only ever use those 18 "slots". You could change up the monsters all you wanted, but you could never add a "19th monster. Have those things been bested by Lord Rubix and the other Hex Lords, since I've last been here ?)

The text limit for monster names has been removed, and you can add double the amount of monsters you previously could.

Good to have you back, Doomblade66! I loved playing your Challenge Mod and it would be awesome to see it make use of some of the editor's latest features.

What's everyone working on right now, by the way?

Also, here's a great playlist to listen to whilst Shining Force modding!

I'm still playtesting extended characters.

Going to Metapha right now.
I was editing the scripts from that part (Script: 29), and just discovered there's a whole construction of dialogues from Kane and Darksol there, along with extra lines from Adam.
Had already noticed Darksol's and Kane's sprites were set on that map, though they never show up.

I wonder what they intended to do with that?
Anyone knows if they have those lines in the japanese version?

Anyway, here's a list of unsolved issues I have found so far:

1) Stats still showing wrong in HQ.
These one was reported before and I think it was addressed as fixed. But sometimes, somehow, the issue still occurs. Mostly (maybe only) with Attack stat when equiping a weapon/ring inside HQ, I think.

2) Game can't handle 33 or more characters in the force.

3) HQ can't place and show 31 or more characters in the force.

4) We have to stick to the +30/+19 rule regarding map and battle sprites.
This one is less critical, but a tool to assign the numbers directly would be very welcome.

5) Map sprites still corrupted.
Some colour errors occur while exporting/importing map sprites. (Kane's cloak is an example)

6) Changing sprites set on map editor freezes the game.
Never saw anyone else complaining, but it did happen to me.
If needed deeper investigation, I can try it out.

I've had the crashing issue also. It has also occurred when I tried to change what sprites appear in cutscenes from the script editor, so something is breaking from the way sprites are linked to dialogue.

Really awesome bug hunting, guys. I haven't encountered the crashing problems with cutscenes yet, but I'll gave that a tinker with this evening and see if I can triple-confirm it.

Anyone heard from RC? Let's try and get some more discussions going to show him that his fans are still eager for more Shining Force modding goodness.

Speaking of which, here's SF2's Odd Eye, courtesy of the awesome super pixel artist Dan:

Wow those battle sprites look great!!! How is Kane coming along?

I want to revisit Kane again very soon. I included a latest draft a few pages back but I have instructed my artist friend Dan to revisit Kane for the next project. When I had previously given Dan the brief I insisted that we make his size relative to Max (promoted). I have spent a lot of time analysing Sega's artwork since then and have concluded that Max -- and therefore the previous Kane drafts -- were drawn a little too big when compared to the other Force members.

Currently Dan is working on playable Minotaur and Lizardman characters. If he is free I will ask him if he would be willing to work on Kane again next week. Current Minotaur draft:

Awesome news man! Im looking forward to working with these sprites.

Ok, I was going through my mod with a quick once-over (spoiler alert: it's still broken) and realized that, at some point at least, editing sprite sets on maps did work. I know because I have These lovely lads changed and it works(ed)



Unfortunately, I have no idea which version of the editor I was using when I initially changed them so... issues. It was most likely before the scripting editor was introduced, as both currently cause crashing. I'll continue to look into it.

Are they working ingame still?

I tried changing sprites with the ancient 1.3.0 version and it didn't work.
I haven't tried it on a fresh rom though. Maybe it could work if the rom had no changes by event editor.

Those ones had been working since I changed them, but it was years ago when that happened.

Just got to chapter 8.

Unfortunately, that same Shade Abbey issue is taking place there.
Just walked through the city, the castle and the gate and was unable to enter either of them.
Even tried to use the Chaos Breaker and get straight into the CoA, but it didn't show up.

Any chance this could be a quick fix, Rubix?

Sorry, haven't had as much time for testing/researching lately and getting caught up in other things.

1) Stats still showing wrong in HQ.

Haven't verified this myself yet. Sounds like it is correct unless you change equipment in HQ? I'll have to test that.

2) Game can't handle 33 or more characters in the force.

Oh? What happens at that point?

3) HQ can't place and show 31 or more characters in the force.

With the sprite limits this takes some work to do much about. It doesn't cause any actual issues though right? Just can't see everybody? I liked the secondary HQ map option, but that would take some time to get working.

5) Map sprites still corrupted.

Fixed now. That was due to some code where I was originally trying to preserve the old export scheme as much as possible alongside the new routines. It should work if the colors aren't already messed up. To fix enemy sprites that got broken you'll probably have to backup an export and transfer sprites from an original export or something, sorry.

6) Changing sprites set on map editor freezes the game.

I've never seen this and I can't reproduce it. Changing sprites should not really affect much of anything, so it must be some sort of interaction with something else you are doing in the scripting editor or something like that. Not sure...

Unfortunately, that same Shade Abbey issue is taking place there.

I guess this is the only overworld map which isn't also a battle. Same issue as the others just for a different reason. Easy enough quick fix, though not sure the best way to really properly get those exits into/editable in the editor. Quick workaround for the moment though. Should be good in this new version, but I wasn't able to extensively test yet.

Update

v2.11.12 - 5/22/2017
[Battles]
* Battle exits properly handle the chapter 8 world map
* Debug menu fix for exits fixes chapter 8 world map
[Graphics]
* Fix for exporting graphics with enemy palettes

Oh, thanks for another quick update Rubix!


1) Think that's it. Changing equipment inside HQ is showing wrong stats.
2) After we get the 33rd character to join, once we walk inside the HQ the game crashes.
3) Correct. Not a great deal. Just desirable.
5) Cool!
6) Haven't test much myself. But it happened to ShininGeek also.
I just changed some sprites in the map editor (especificaly those of Varios, Kane, Torasu and Alef), and once I did, the game would crash whenever I spoke to someone or tried to leave a map.
Had previously changed some scripts, but everything was working fine until I changed the sprites.

I cannot begin to express how exciting it is to see another update roll out. Lobo and ShininGeek in particular have both done great jobs in identifying a handful of lingering bugs. And of course it's awesome to have you back, RC.

Lobo wrote:6) Changing sprites set on map editor freezes the game.
Never saw anyone else complaining, but it did happen to me.
If needed deeper investigation, I can try it out.

I've encountered a different issue when tinkering town map sprites. For me, when changing certain map sprites I get some weird screen effects, as detailed on this page.

Well, it could just be that same unique map sprite issue, and depending on your emulator and such some people get a crash and some people just get some garbage graphics.

I need to go back and make a routine to limit / optimize those. That may fix the issues Lobo/ShiningGeek are having.

Edit: Also, oh. On the 33rd character in HQ crash, that's I think just because it is attempting to place all of them despite running out of slots. That's a relatively easy fix, I just hadn't yet decided how to approach the HQ slot expansion issue. But for now I should go and try to make it just stop adding them once it hits the limit.

rubixcuber wrote:Well, it could just be that same unique map sprite issue, and depending on your emulator and such some people get a crash and some people just get some garbage graphics.

Oh, I see. That's very interesting indeed. I know that Lobo uses a mobile-based Genesis emulator, so that would explain things.

rubixcuber wrote:I need to go back and make a routine to limit / optimize those. That may fix the issues Lobo/ShiningGeek are having.

Does this mean that you are confident that you know what is causing the issue?

Lobo wrote:1) Think that's it. Changing equipment inside HQ is showing wrong stats.

I haven't been able to test this one yet (but absolutely will do so now that the new Editor version is out!), but this sounds like a very strange bug indeed. RC, is there a reason why such a thing would function different in the HQ only?

I've been using the RetroArch emulator for Android for the last couple of months, since the MD.emu kept randomly reseting the game when trying to change maps.

The issue by changing sprites, in the RetroArch emulator the screen turns black and never come back whenever I speak to someone or leave a map.

I changed sprites on maps: 0, 25, 26, 34, 45 and 47.
The sprites I changed were: 11, 16, 41, 117 and 121.

Didn't change anything else in that editor.
Or maybe I did a long time ago, as I was using an already modded rom from Brothers Mod.

Maybe I should try to reproduce the issue with a fresh rom...

Edit: Also, oh. On the 33rd character in HQ crash, that's I think just because it is attempting to place all of them despite running out of slots. That's a relatively easy fix, I just hadn't yet decided how to approach the HQ slot expansion issue. But for now I should go and try to make it just stop adding them once it hits the limit.

Very nice to know it should be an easy fix!


EDIT:

Besides those problems already listed, everything seems to be working fine with extended characters.
Have 3 of them on my current force!

EDIT2:

Closing the end of the game and still finding broken maps.

1) The Gate of Ancients map on Runefaust seems to be one way only. I can't leave the map downwards. Only by entering the gate, if it's open.

2) Once you enter the gate, you get to a room with a teleport pad. Step on it and you get to another room with an exit to the north. This exit should lead you to the Colossus battle map, but it isn't working either.

So, two more to go.

Sorry for the delay. I think I've got most everything fixed now.

The sprite issues were due to too many unique sprite graphics, the limit is 12.

The map editor now enforces that limit and shows how many you are using when in the sprite editor (the table based one rather than on the map)

The missing gate of ancients exits have been added to the debug fix.

And the HQ will stop at slot 30 rather than crashing now allowing larger numbers of characters to be used even though they don't show up in headquarters.

I'm not 100% sure on the stats in HQ, can somebody give an exact example?

Update

v2.11.13 - 6/5/2017
[Battles]
* Debug menu fix for exits fixes the edge of map exits for the gate of ancients
[Maps]
* Will warn and prevent saving when using more than 12 unique sprite graphics on the same map
* Number of unique sprite graphics shown at top of column in map sprite editor with red highlight if over limit
[Characters]
* HQ Will stop at 30 slots and no longer crash with too many characters (save in character editor to apply fix)