Hey all,
I decided to make a short tutorial on how to make some new techs using my tech editor. It's sort of a way to show off what it can do:. Before we begin here is the final product after following this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCz9R3iBhLUMAKE A BACKUP NOW!!!!
Ice Storm
Animations:
The first tech we'll create is Ice Storm. Basically we want to throw ice at an enemy. One can imagine that this is going to require a good chunk of since it'll have alot of objects. So we'll have to replace a tech that uses alot of space....glancing at Marle's techs we see that Cure 2 uses quite a bit of space...let's replace that one.
When it first opens you'll see Cure's Data
First we'll clear out the objects (Highlight the object and click ctrl + D or Edit->Delete:
Now the key to techs since there's so many unknowns is to use existing techs and edit instead of building from scratch so at this point I copy overed data from Slash since I felt it was similar to what I wanted. One of the good things about the latest release of Tech editor is data is copied to the clipboard. So you can have 2 versiosn of tech editor open one on slash and one on the tech you are editing and copy paste between them, (you have to save and refresh after the copy/pase though).
Now slash is bigger than cure 2 (you can check lower left corners for sizes) so we can't copy ALL of it over, but we don't need as many ice storms as slash has. Looking at the data it's obvious that some of the objects are almost a direct copy paste and thus aren't THAT important to the tech. We'll copy over the first second and third object first, these are the caster/ the target/ and the target again i believe they have a target if hit and a target if miss in every tech.
First I copy overed object one, refresh (save, load another tech, reload this tech) made sure everything was cool clicked add object and copy overed object2, repeat for object three.
Awesome, ok now lets look at the rest of the objects for slash. The lengths of each object are displayed as the third number, it's obvious that the 4th object is important, taking a look at it you can see that this object sets the pallete, and does sound effects, we should probably add that one.
The next three objects are carbon copies of each other. If we cut out 2 of these objects then we should be able to fit the rest of them into cure 2's space. The next object has one extra command an "EndSection" if you've been paying attention to the other thread the command StartSection/EndSectiosn are used to handle timing of techs (for example in the caster you wait for section 4 before you end the tech). We can add that section just to be safe, finally the last section is smaller than the rest but we'll add it too....(this is just trial and error...).
So we are adding 4/6 of the rest object scratch two of the "20 length' objects. I know it's a pain, i'll add the ability to copy/paste objects later but for now just copy them over one node at a time.
Now you probably would think that you'd be able to load up and see your new tech and to be hones tI thought you'd be able to as well, i mean all we did was get rid of two carbon copy objects with seemingly no useful data in them. However if you run it it ALMOST complete, the graphics are for cure so it looks kind of goofy but it just doesn't quite end.
You'll notice the screen darkens, and comes back, and the caster goes back to her fighting stance this is handled by "super Command 1D and 1E" in the first object (casters object). What doesn't happen is the Tech end and no damage is displayed on the target (second object). Looking at the first and second objects we notice that they both have the unknown command 23 02. Right before the end of the tech and showing damage command
This command is very similar to the StartSection command in the sense the the code stops but unlike the start section (24 XX by the way, very close to 23 XX), i dont know how to increment the parameter to move on to this start section yet. However, you can change 23 02 to 23 01 and the tech should continue.
Load up the tech and run it and Voila the tech continues, apparantly the XX in 23 XX gets up to one somehow but we deleted something that sets the XX to 2.
Properties:
Now it's pretty cool but there's a couple problems. We shouldn't be selecting an ally, the grapics look weird cause they are for cure still (stars). Lucky it's not that hard to fix this go to View-> Properties. You can collapse all the properties except: Animation Header, Graphics and Hacking.
So Animation header and graphics seem to be intermingled to me, I made both of them the same as Ice's (again i recommend having two progams open at the same time). WARNING don't change graphic header byte 01 because it changes the animations that are loaded (all the work you did at the beginning of this tutorial!) If you load it up now she doesn't throw stars she throws ice ball things.
Now for the hacking tab. I mainly just copied over spincut's data, Some of these are not fully explored, makes sure you make hit% not 00, I forgot when I first did this and it never hit the enemies. Change target to one enemy, tech type to Damage, physical damage is just sort of the level of damage the tech does (cyclone is low, while spincut/leapslash are high for example). Really I guess this shouldn't be a physical attack but right now I dont know how to specifically say this is an "Ice" attack. Here's how mine looked
That's it! If you load up the rom and cast cure 2 she should choose an enemy and throw ice at him. You can tweak the animations/sound effects to your liking.
Haste2
OK, i'll try to make this one faster, were going to replace ice2 (i sort of chose this randomly). Delete all the objects but one and copy over the data from haste:
Now since this time we'll be doing more event editing it makes since to change the properties now. Copy over all the properties for regular haste into ice2's properties (except graphics header byte 01). Set Target to all allies
If you load the rom and caste ice2 now it should do haste, but it affects everyone. It doesn't seem like it should affect everyone though...Yet! Let's go back to the animations and see what we can do. Doing a quick glance it is clear that object1 is the caster (as always) object 2 is the targets (as always), that means the last object is the clock.
We'll edit this, the goal of this tech is to start the object on the caster, move it to PC1, move it to PC2 and move it to PC3. We'll take care not to remove any endsections cause they are used to set up timing. It takes some trial and error but: The basic idea is:
Before section2:
Don't mess with any of the loading parts of the clock:
Start the clock in spinning animation (load animation 1 instead of 0)
Give the clock one setspeed you can delete the others
In section 2
instead of sendtoTarget(03) make it sendToTarget 01 (instead of target we make it PC1)
Pause
send to target 02 (that's pc )
Pause
send to target 00 (that's the caster)
After awhile you'll get it working, make sure you don't remove endsections or the tech will wait indefinately looking for one. Also in the 'target object' (that's object 2) I removed the 34 1a and 34 1b, those command smake the red aura around them.
That does it! Load up the game and cast ice 2, it should select everyone, have the clock do a circle, no red aura, and everyone has haste!
One problem is only the "target" spins.....i don tknow how on some techs it applies the target code to EVERYONE (like frog's heal), as opposed to just the "main target". comparing heal to techs like aura and cure should eventually yield the answer.
ALSO: Note that cure2 and Ice2 ar eshared techs, this means that Frog's heal2 and Magus Ice 2 are gunna be screwed up right now.
--JP
