Question on SA and something else

[justin3009]

I've been working with SA as I believe i've said before, it's quite easy but the only thing I do not get is this

Is there ANY way to make the SA route to empty space?  Because with the whole thing that we're doing as a little test, there is DEFINATELY not enough room for all the sprites to fit into that much of space.

Now for my 2nd question.

Ok, i've been working with expanding the rom and putting Crono's Sprites at the end of the rom as well to see if I can move the graphics to there for a little test i'm doing.  It works out great the game runs fine and sprites show up ONLY in the Character Select Menu.  Once you leave it, the characters are surrounded by random stuff and it's just really weird.  I'm guessing it's because of the sprite assembly but...wouldn't that not matter?   It's the same sprites in the same order

242000   242014   PTR   N   Pointers to character graphics - I changed Crono's to 00 00 41, the location is at 410000  I thought maybe C0 00 41 would help but god damn that made it worse.  I'll get a screenshot up. - :/...

[Vehek]

I've done some testing and it looks like the game has trouble loading the PC sprites in the field when they've been relocated. BTW, the "random stuff" is actually part of Ayla's sprites.

[justin3009]

Yea, When you walk sideways it has Crono's Head and his feet and that's bout it ._.  Blah, this throws my idea out the window ;[

Edit: Walking Left it shwos his head walking right it shows his feet.

[Geiger]

You guys are probably missing some pointers somewhere, probably in the ASM code.  For example, the independent string banks are hard to get moved properly because some of them have a dozen pointers in various places in the ASM.

---T.Geiger

[justin3009]

><...Well this just makes things more complicated.

[Vehek]

I can't remember when, but sometime after Justin found this problem, I looked through the rom and found some code that looked like it was involved in loading the sprites.
Now, I've looked closer and I think I have why the game loads graphics from the wrong location.
At C0/E687 is a subroutine which seems to be involved in getting part of the sprite graphics.
This is a description of what part of it does:

Load graphics bank value into accumulator.
If accumulator is $7F, go to some routines (I think this is for compressed graphics)
Subtract $D2 from accumulator
If accumulator is 0, go to bank $D2 loading code.
Subtract 1 from accumulator
If accumulator is 0, go to bank $D3 loading code.
Subtract 1 from accumulator
If accumulator is 0, go to bank $D4 loading code

Then after that is the code for loading graphics from bank $D5. When we repoint the graphics, it doesn't fit any of the conditions and goes right to the code for getting graphics from bank $D5.

[justin3009]

Progress yet not progress.  Loads HALF of the correct sprites but then kills everything else xD

[Vehek]

What are you trying? Here's what I've managed to do:

(Actually, I did this last night, even before mentioning what I'd found.)

[justin3009]

....!  How did you do that!  That's what I was trying to accomplish!  That's all we needed for the map sprites was for them to load correctly for the 8th char!  Then after we have this, we have to somehow fix it's battle animations and we'll be set mostly for it ^^.

PS: I'm gonna PM you about something that Cheyne and I want to do but with permission. 

[Vehek]

I made it go to a copy of part of the code. Instead of checking if the bank's $7F, it checks if it's in $41. If it's not, it goes back to the original code and continues normally. Otherwise, it goes to code that loads data from bank $41.

[justin3009]

Damn my horrible ASM skills...I'm having horrible issues with this xD

[Vehek]

Here's a patch which uses space at 24F540. For now, it only helps with graphics in bank $41.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[justin3009]

Ahh!  Thank you!  I envy your ASM skills =[

Edit: Did you get my PM?