Faxanadu Retranslation

[Ascended Mermaid]

To-do:
- Lamp
- Crystal
- Fire Crystal
- Book
- (Ultimate/Permanent Key) "Key Pendant"
- ADD Eolis door, again
- Naming Screen
// Almost there!!!
- Difficulty Level Selection
- Possible new code for every unused item
- Dark towers
- Enablers/Disablers; basically, every flag and value related to difficulty levels
- Mantra (Eolis)
- Brown Potion
// Should be incredibly easy!!!
- Shops; adding unused items and their prices.
// Added Brown Potion in Apolune.
- Change remaining USA font to EUR font
// This means the font on the Title Screen, in Menus, and so on and so forth.
- Apostrophes for item names; requires graphics hacks.
- Dying returns the player to the title screen.
// On higher difficulty levels!!!
- Plan out shop-related hacks so they're efficient.
- Plan out dark tower related hacks
// The last part of the game has many areas which can be considered "towers".
- Anything that could and should be planned out prior to hacking.
- Possible "Ranking" system, for hardcore players.
- Another Ace Key.
- Return from Zenis Fortress after finale.
- Fix up unfinished enemies.
- Eliminate King bug.
- Add unfinished stuff.
- Finalize indoor weaponry hacks; make everything take effect immediately!
- Remove the invisible ladder from the room below the pendant room!
- Become invincible to shield attacks too, via Ointment!
- Make the Dragon Slayer the ONLY weapon strong enough to defeat the Evil One!
// The Evil One must NOT be killable by magic!
- Make it so the Poison doesn't knock you back. :)
- Make it so you can't be knocked off of a screen. :)
// Hell, just disable knockbacks altogether! :D
- Enable shield equips while wielding the Dragon Slayer.
- Fine tune shield sprites to match Battle Armor sprites.
// May have to add new shield sprites, etc.
- Thank "radblast"
- Thank "adoru"
- Thank "Unsavory Maggot"
- Thank "SP"
End of to-do list.

Gotta love that invisible ink. ;)

// Updated 12/09/08
// Updated ""/""/"" again at 5:07 PM
// Updated 12/11/08

[Ascended Mermaid]

*adds things to his offline to-do list, and checks off other things...* Ahhh, the smell of progress!

[Ascended Mermaid]

The new enemies don't appear to give out much (if any) EXP. I can make them give you anywhere from 0-255 EXP. The horny slugs give you 30, so I'll make the weakest enemy give you 15, just for giggles.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Random fact: The most EXP you can get off of any enemy (including bosses) in the original game, is 158.

[Ascended Mermaid]

That's strange. I played the hack from start to finish, and it has slowdown in areas with the blue long-legged monsters. It's probably just the PAL emulation. I'll have to mess with it just a while longer.

// The reason that I even use PAL emulation in the first place, is because of the fact that I'm hacking the european version. There should be an easy way to switch it to NTSC, but I've just been too preoccupied with the more important hacks.

// I also have some NOPs implemented to replace useless code, but I can't think of anything more efficient than having two NOPs side by side. XD *checks opcodes*

[Ascended Mermaid]

More progress!!!!

[Ascended Mermaid]

...and distractions. >.>" If I had headphones, this wouldn't be a problem, but there's a noisy child here.

I need to work on the Brown Potion without distractions. >.>"

[Ascended Mermaid]

Let's take a look at this:
CA02:2C 02 20 BIT $2002 = #$40
CA05:70 FB BVS $CA02

BIT is often used to skip one or two following bytes.
BVS (Branch on oVerflow Set) to $CA02 (THE PREVIOUS LINE)

So it does this...

BIT->BVS->BIT->BVS->BIT->BVS->BIT->BVS->BIT->BVS->BIT->BVS->...~

>.<" When will it end?!?! >.>" It's driving me crazy!!!

// Screw this! *sets breakpoints to lines following these looping commands, and clicks "run"* there... now I'm past that shit!

[Ascended Mermaid]

00:B3BA:AD C1 03  LDA $03C1 = #$11
00:B3BD:29 11     AND #$11
// Checks if the Brown Potion is equipped.

00:B3BF:F0 0F     BEQ $B3D0
// If not, jump to $B3D0

00:B3C1:A5 18     LDA $0018 = #$00
00:B3C3:29 04     AND #$04
// Checks if the Down button is held.

00:B3C5:F0 09     BEQ $B3D0
// If not, jump to $B3D0

00:B3C7:A5 16     LDA $0016 = #$00
00:B3C9:29 40     AND #$40
// Checks if the B button is pressed.

00:B3CB:F0 03     BEQ $B3D0
// If not, jump to $B3D0

00:B3CD:20 33 C5  JSR $?
// Jump to SubRoutine for dialog "I've used Brown Potion."

00:B3CD:20 33 C5  JSR $?
// Jump to SubRoutine for Mana recovery.

00:B3CD:20 33 C5  JSR $?
// Jump to SubRoutine to clear Item.

00:B3D0:60        RTS
// Return to your regularly scheduled routine.

>.>" Programming that, was the easy part. Trying to find a good routine to interrupt/branch out of, isn't.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Oh, goody; "B3BA" was infact used someplace else. I have effectively fucked up the Red Potion! >.<" Want to know what it does? It crashes the game when you use it; ironically, you use the red potion, and the red potion itself calls the "item use" function, which is the same as trying to use the red potion, therefore sticking the game in a nice loop. XD

...Oh, wait, that B3BA bit was my doing. XD I forgot I fucked around with something in the Red Potion data earlier, when I was trying to figure out how to make Mana recovery possible...

DATA MOVE SUCCESSFUL!

[Ascended Mermaid]

...fucking emulator crashes!!! >.>" GOD DAMN IT!

// Not that I lost any hard work or anything... >.>" Kindof annoying when you're just about to make a breakthrough and all that.

// It... IT WORKS!!! ...almost. XD I still have a few bugs to iron out.

[Ascended Mermaid]

Once I finish the Brown Potion hack (It's almost done, I swear!) eliminate some new bugs (YIKES!) and add it to the shop, I'll gladly put the beta hack online for all to see.

// The Brown Potion is done. Now I have to fix the bugs caused by my ignorance; I completely missed the fact that hit detection and everything else was completely off thanks to the so-called elimination of knockbacks. XD

AHA! I put my Brown Potion hack in the sprite boundary table! XD That explains it... ... ...

DAMMIT!

[User]

The hype is increasing for this business. I was THIS close to starting on Faxanadu WITHOUT patches a few days ago. I managed to stop myself though. I want the game to be fresh for me when this gets done. Haven't really played this bad boy in like seven years or something.

Cool stuff, this is! I have never really cared about a game hack before, but this is different! (Wait, excluding that super ambitious Zelda 3 thingy, which turned out to be crap).

[Ascended Mermaid]

Well, I do hope you will enjoy it. Alot of BST is going into this thing. Especially the fact that since I finally got the damned Brown Potion working correctly, I had to undo all of that hard work! (But not before saving the data someplace!)

I perfect one hack, and screw up something else. You know, I think I've heard this story before.

// I need to figure out how to switch ROM banks. Since I'm limited to a single ROM bank, which uses bytes 8000-FFFF, and I don't have a lot of room to work with in the first place, that could be VERY beneficial.

// I know I can access 040001-080000 (expanded data) with a hex editor, but how do I make opcodes branch out (JMP, BNE, BEQ, JSR, etc.) to that area? I mean, I know that 000000-040000 are a bunch of misc banks and that I can't access everything relative to those in the 8000-FFFF space. (gimme a break, I don't know the proper names of these things) I mean, for instance, I know that "JMP $040001" isn't going to work, so what will?

[Ascended Mermaid]

I got it to work without expanding the ROM. I haven't tested it much outside of going "YAY! BROWN POTION!!!", but I can say that I've got it to work. However, I'm struggling with dialog boxes; I can't figure out what the "LDA #$80" is checking for, since it's going for immediate access and not specific access.

Oh well, he drinks the damn thing at least! No need to announce to the world that "You've used Brown Potion."

I just hope that the data at FCCE-FCEC wasn't too important! ;3 It was just a bunch of FF bytes, so I assumed not.

[Ascended Mermaid]

So this happens when I use the Brown Potion... and then it recovers my MP.

If I set the MessageID to 98 (which is where the new Brown Potion text should be) instead, I get a blank box.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to make MessageID 98 usable. Once I figure it out, though, it'll be cake for everything else.

[Ascended Mermaid]

00:C199:A0 00     LDY #$00
00:C19B:B1 CC     LDA ($CC),Y @ $8261 = #$03
00:C19D:C9 FF     CMP #$FF
00:C19F:D0 0E     BNE $C1AF
00:C1A1:C8        INY
00:C1A2:B1 CC     LDA ($CC),Y @ $8261 = #$03
00:C1A4:C9 80     CMP #$80
00:C1A6:D0 EB     BNE $C193
00:C1A8:C8        INY
00:C1A9:B1 CC     LDA ($CC),Y @ $8261 = #$03
00:C1AB: 2E 04  STA $042E = #$FF
00:C1AE:60        RTS

This is what I've been staring at. This seems to be the real meat and potatoes of the MessageID stuff... but none of the changes I make in this area seem to really affect anything. I am stumped.

[Ascended Mermaid]

"I've used Brown Potion." -> "This is the town of Forepaw."

; SO CLOSE!!!

[Ascended Mermaid]

Since all of the addresses are used up, and there's no easy way to do this, I was considering replacing some unused text. "You need a key." seems appropriate, as anytime it seems it would be used, you see "There is a mark of "Jack/Queen/King/Ace/Joker" by the key hole." instead -- I can't think of anywhere it's used.

I'll have to do this tomorrow in the afternoon, as I have to get ready for sleep now. I have work tomorrow.

[Falcom Director of Fanservice]

Am I a bad person for giggling when you encounter these random problems?

Because getting "Welcome to Forepaw" after a potion dies is pretty funny.