New Tech Editor

[Mauron]

Edit: ideally I'd like the screen to turn dark blue like during Ice2 tech, however I noticed that this effect is part of Layer 3 Packet effects, and since I have to use a different one for my new tech, it appears I have no access to that blue effect.

Unfortunately Layer 3 effects are likely not going to be supported in Hi-Tech - they're a whole different thing to handle. I'll look into it again though.

Draw/Hide Shadow commands that appear in some techs don't work either. Do you happen to know if there's any way, or I'm out of luck on this?

I'll check on those commands in a bit. It's possible there's something else that's needed to use them.

not that theres any real rush but just curious if there are any plans to make it 8thy compatible? and I believe at one time you wanted the option to give Magus some dualtechs

Hi-Tech's part in the 8thy project and Magus dual techs project is done. When you first run Hi-Tech, it creates a file called Hi-Tech.ini in your romname.proj folder, created by Temporal Flux. For a project that has added techs, you can alter these settings to support whatever extensions have been added.

The hard part is adding the support for these techs in game.

[psychedelist]

Thanks for looking into it.

I don't mean it as a support request, mentioning just in case you'd happen to know what's going on. Tried giving Geyser to Magus, and it works almost perfect, except that the graphics data for the 6 energy balls is completely wrong. Sprite Packet 2 index is responsible for it, I set it exactly same as in original boss tech, but it gives what appears to be part of Haste clock thing, and colored in pink. Then tried changing the value randomly, and hmm, why would they put "graphics" like that into the game.

Anyway, any idea what could go wrong with the index/graphics? I realize it may be not editor's issue at all though.

Edit: checked actual boss battle to make sure ROM isn't corrupted somehow. When the boss uses the attack, everything displays correctly. So either editor reads/saves incorrect value for Sprite Packet 2, or I'm doing something wrong, or game treats that value differently for character and enemy techs.

[Mauron]

Have you copied over the animation and assembly packet, sprite packet 1, and unknown 5? They should load the same data between PC and enemy tech, so something else must be missing.

I was decoding animation command 22, and I've found some mistakes in other decodings.
- Wait for section/wait for subsection has been redecoded as wait for counter 1C/1D.
- Unknown 22 is now decoded as wait for counter #.
- Load Graphics Header Byte 7 has been redecoded as increment counter #.
- Increment Section/Subsection has been redecoded as increment counter 1C/1D.
- Unknown 37 has been decoded as decrement counter #.
- Decrement Section/subsection has been redecoded as decrement counter 1C/1D.
- Displace Relative has been redecoded as Increase counter # by X.
- Increase Subsection by X has been redecoded as increase counter 1C by X.
- Increase Subsection by unknown value has been redecoded as add counter # to counter 1C.
- Displace Absolute has been redecoded as Set Counter #.
- Set Section/subsection has been redecoded as Set Counter 1C/1D.
- Unknown 41 has been decoded as Copy Counter # to Counter #.
- Unknown 42 has been decoded as Copy Counter 1C to Counter #.
- Unknown 49 has been decoded as Add or subtract value from Counter #.
- Unknown 4A and 4D have been decoded as Swap Counters 1C and 1D.
- Unknown 4E has been decoded as Swap Counters 1C and 1E
- Unknown 4F has been decoded as Swap Counters 1C and 1F.
- Unknown 6C has been confirmed to be related to Counter 0 and unknowns 69 and 6A.
- Tech targeting routines 2A-31 have been confirmed to be related to Counters 0-8.

[psychedelist]

Have you copied over the animation and assembly packet, sprite packet 1, and unknown 5? They should load the same data between PC and enemy tech, so something else must be missing.

Graphics header was exactly same, except the animation index, because I figured it's better to use separate objects for the character tech instead of referencing boss animation directly. Animation objects were same, except for Target objects, which were same as in original Dark Mist. Tried replacing them with same objects as in boss tech, but that didn't help. Now is the interesting thing: when I tried to set animation index exactly same as in boss tech, it loaded up completely different animation objects than actual Geyser. It was a triple tech, looking a lot like Triple Raid, didn't even glitch/crash in-game. I think if animation index is treated same for character and enemy techs, this probably shouldn't happen.

By the way, is there any known way to make a tech not clickable from menu (feature for healing techs)?

[Mauron]

Animation index is different for different tech types. Item animation index 01 is Tonic, player tech animation index 01 is Cyclone. Player tech animation index 6C is 3D Attack.

It looked like sprite objects were the same in player and enemy techs - I'll do some more checking later.

Menu techs are controlled by assembly. 0x3FF837 should be what you need for the change you described. Change it from 0F to 0E.

[Mauron]

Hi-Tech Beta 16!

- Fixed issue with set palette command.
- Wait for section/subsection redecoded as wait for counter 1C/1D
- Increment section/subsection redecoded as wait for counter 1C/1D
- Store Coordinates of object redecoded as store coordinates of target.
- Fixed a bug where Play Sound (3-Bytes) was loading as Unknown 2-Bytes.
- Set section/subsection redecoded as set counter 1C/1D
- Decrement section/subection redecoded as decrement counter 1C/1D
- Decrement counter 1C/1D now listed properly in the editor.
- Unknown 37 decoded as decrement counter #.
- Load Layer 3 Packet redecoded as increment counter #.
- Displace relative redecoded as increase counter # by value.
- Increase subsection by x has been redecoded as increase counter 1C by value.
- Displace Absolute redecoded as set counter.
- Unknown 41 decoded as Copy Counter.
- Unknown 42 decoded as Copy Counter 1C.
- Unknown 49 decoded as Add to or subtract from counter.
- Unknowns 4A and 4D decoded as swap counters 1C and 1D.
- Unknown 4E decoded as swap counters 1C and 1E.
- Unknown 4F decoded as swap counters 1C and 1F.
- Fixed issue with tech requirement list not updating properly.
- Fixed issue with modifying enemy attacks when reloading.
- Fixed spacing issue with enemy attack names when enemies reached the maximum name length
- Fixed spacing issue with enemy tech and attack effect header 0xFF edit error message.

[psychedelist]

I kept playing around with my Geyser idea, and here's what I found, maybe it'll be of some use, as info on possible differences in how the game works with character vs boss techs.

Boss tech uses Spirte Packet 1 for effect objects graphics, whereas character tech uses Sprite Packet 2. Once I put value from boss's Sprite Packet 1 to my character's Sprite Packet 2, it started loading graphics for energy balls correctly, but they were incorrect color and their animation was messy, with graphics getting replaced with empty squares at certain moments. To fix the color, I changed Set Pallete value from 00 to 0F in first Effect object. To fix the messy animations, I changed all Play Animation commands from "loop" to "play first frame" in all Effect objects. Now it looks identical to the boss tech*, fantastic, thank you once again. I didn't have to change it, but Unknown 5 in Graphics header was affecting Effect object animations dramatically, ranging from just wrong graphics to completely messing up entire screen (but still not freezing the game).

*-Edit: almost identical. Actually the balls are missing their "tails" and therefore look shorter. It's like the sprites can't exceed specific limit in height and width. Even if there's no way to resolve this, still no tragedy.

I noticed that in the new version, the command that previously was "Load Layer 3 Graphics" or similar, is now decoded as Decrement Counter, with description saying "Increase a specific Counter # by one" (possible mistake in description?). Bit confused by it, because previous decode version seemed closer to what the command actually does, at least to me as an end user. Is displaying the layer 3 graphics somehow related to working with counters?

Edit2:

Menu techs are controlled by assembly. 0x3FF837 should be what you need for the change you described. Change it from 0F to 0E.

Thanks, that worked but was giving clickability to Ice2 for some reason. Once i changed from 0E to 00, both Ice2 and Cure2 became non-clickable. Was it a correct/safe change?

[Mauron]

It's possible some of these counters have special meanings - Counters 1C and 1D are definitely just counters, these were previously section and subsection - but counters 1E and 1F seem be more positioning related.

Looking at *Lightning, it's a combination of both Command 34 increments the specified counter - the label was wrong, not the tip - but there's another piece of code that only runs when counter 1B is not zero, that handles layer 3 effects. When this code finishes, it resets Counter 1B to zero, and the wait for Counter 1B can continue.

I'll start analyzing the special properties of counters - can you keep an eye out for techs that mess with counters other than 1C and 1D.

[Mauron]

Thanks, that worked but was giving clickability to Ice2 for some reason. Once i changed from 0E to 00, both Ice2 and Cure2 became non-clickable. Was it a correct/safe change?

I think I was mixing up two of your planned changes. My instructions were to move the useable in menu properties from one tech to another, but Life2 was the one being moved, wasn't it? 00 should work fine.

Hi-Tech Beta 17!

- Fixed label issues with increment counter and decrement counter
- Unknown 21 decoded as conditional return from super command
- Play Weapon Sound variants decoded as regular/ranged and critical/melee.
- Play Weapon Sound (3-bytes) display error fixed.
- Fixed a glitch where some techs would be overwritten due to a size calculation error.

[psychedelist]

I think I was mixing up two of your planned changes. My instructions were to move the useable in menu properties from one tech to another, but Life2 was the one being moved, wasn't it? 00 should work fine.

Yeah, old Cure2 becomes Life2 and old Life2 becomes something else, and I want neither one clickable in menu. Thanks.

Thanks a lot for the new version also! I was affected by that overwrite glitch, glad it was found.

[Mauron]

Hi-Tech Beta 18!

- Split Control Header Unknown 02 into Player Attack, Tech, Unknown 2.20, Enemy Vs Enemy Attack, and Unknown 2.F.
- Fixed multiple issues with loading expanded animation types.
- Added consistency to control header unknown labeling
- Fixed HiTech.ini support for player effect headers
- Fixed default value for maximum player effect header.
- Updated tech effect list genereation.
- Fixed crash with prerelease ROMs and rock techs.
- Fixed issue with combo tech requirements loading extra data (and crashing in JPN ROMs)
- Fixed issue with combo tech requirement display in non-US ROMs.

[Zakyrus]

F*ck ya! Thanks.

[DLDrago]

Hi-Tech Beta 18 looks like the picture in the attachment in both Temporal Flux 3.01 and 3.02.  I'm using Windows 10.  Any fix?

[Mauron]

Some parts of the window don't like to stay put if things get resized. It should open normally if it's the first thing opened, but I'll add a workaround to keep things in place.

[stewelement]

What I have been doing is:
1. Make sure TF is fullscreen
2. Open Locations window
3. Open HiTech

Then resize and open/closed windows as desired. It has some trouble if HiTech is the first thing launched, even in fullscreen.