Modding in / out Materia commands

[Gingercat]

There are two commands I want to erase the existence of; these are "Mug" and "Flash", because they interfere with my gameplay strats and render otherwise excellent materia near-useless (a bit hard to steal from enemies you're also doing lethal damage to, and Flash almost always misses... besides, insta-death is cheap!)

In WallMarket, I can delete the "Materia Type Modifier 2" entry, but deleting the "Level 3" AP requirement sees WM not actually clear the value. It reverts back to its previously-saved value, meaning the Materia is still a 3-star item. This isn't a huge deal, but I'm interested in where else the governing mechanics for how many stars / levels a Materia is "supposed to" have are stored; could be interesting to mess with other ones as well.

Anyone got any tips on how to achieve what I'm after?

 

[nfitc1]

This is a known issue with WM. The materia determines how many stars it has based on the next AP level requirement. You can't just erase these and they go away because of some bad coding on my part. Enter a value of 65535 in the one you want to delete and it will go away. That will change, for example, a three-level materia into a two-level.

 

[DLPB_]

I thought it was 4 bytes (and 3 for AP)?

 

[Tenko Kuugen]

considering it's x * (100) for AP cost, 2 bytes is more than enough. actually, I'm not sure the game can handle a base value of >32767
I think I came across this when I set the KOTR cost in N7

 

[DLPB_]

It may well be more than enough, but they used 3 bytes for it.  ;D  I am not sure if this is what NFITC was on about though...

 

[Gingercat]

Oh cool. Breaking the program's ability to handle something in order to get a result that I want - That suits me perfectly! ;D

Thanks for the quick replies guys, muchly appreciated.

Edit: Does this mean I could add stars (and abilities) to other Materia by giving them additional AP levels and corresponding Modifiers in place of a currently blank one?

 

[nfitc1]

It may well be more than enough, but they used 3 bytes for it....

It's two per level. I'm not sure what you're on about. Gingercat wanted to remove the Level 3 from a materia and that's how WM does it.

 

[Tenko Kuugen]

Oh cool. Breaking the program's ability to handle something in order to get a result that I want - That suits me perfectly! ;D

Thanks for the quick replies guys, muchly appreciated.

Edit: Does this mean I could add stars (and abilities) to other Materia by giving them additional AP levels and corresponding Modifiers in place of a currently blank one?

yes
however, this depends on the materia type
yellow and green work pretty much the same, they unlock abilities specific to the level of the materia ( 2nd star = ability 2, 3rd star = ability 3 ) where as purple, red, blue don't work quite like that. Red pretty much determines the number of use directly from the star level so adjusting the numbers there does actually nothing IIRC ( my memory is very wonky on the red materia part )
purple increases the potency and you can manipulatre the min&max values of each level but you can't pass a specific game threshold where maximum effect is obtained ( for example, modding the exp+ materia to give +1000000% exp won't actually give that much extra exp )
Blue materia I forgot but it should be pretty much level-of-materia=number-of-uses

 

[nfitc1]

Red pretty much determines the number of use directly from the star level so adjusting the numbers there does actually nothing IIRC ( my memory is very wonky on the red materia part )
purple increases the potency and you can manipulatre the min&max values of each level but you can't pass a specific game threshold where maximum effect is obtained ( for example, modding the exp+ materia to give +1000000% exp won't actually give that much extra exp )
Blue materia I forgot but it should be pretty much level-of-materia=number-of-uses

You are correct about Red and Purple. Blue functions about the same as purple depending on what it is it modifies, but adds effects based on what it's linked to. Sometimes it's magnitude, sometimes it's number of uses. (eg. Elemental vs Quadra Magic)

 

[Gingercat]

Of course. I was thinking of possibly adding effects to materia that would normally be found within that materia's "family" (ie, Steal becoming Steal-As-Well with sufficient levelling, since they're both Yellow abilities).  Makes sense that depending on the color involved it would change what you're able to do.

In the case of Summons, I note that the Modifers 2-6 are "1" to "5" respectively - Presumably this is the "allowed number of uses per level". Does changing these do anything? Ie, would doubling each result in twice as many summons per level?

 

[xLostWingx]

Of course. I was thinking of possibly adding effects to materia that would normally be found within that materia's "family" (ie, Steal becoming Steal-As-Well with sufficient levelling, since they're both Yellow abilities).  Makes sense that depending on the color involved it would change what you're able to do.

In the case of Summons, I note that the Modifers 2-6 are "1" to "5" respectively - Presumably this is the "allowed number of uses per level". Does changing these do anything? Ie, would doubling each result in twice as many summons per level?

Steal is Yellow...Steal as well is Blue.  I've never had any luck with "Cross-Family" Materia commands.  Any magic materia will accept any magic ability afaik.  I haven't tried tossing an extra summon onto any Red materia (Level 1 Shiva > Level 2 Iftrit >Level 3 Rumah), but I suspect it won't work.  I've tried sticking Summons on Green Materia and they tend to show up in the Menus, but not in battle.  I don't think you can get Blue materia to have multiple effects either.  I do think I've been able to get Yellow materia to have multiple commands from within the same "Family" before though...but I could be wrong.

As far as Summon levels go, isn't it 1, 2, 3, 4, Infinite (or whatever the max value would be)?  Although...I do think that I've managed to make One Star Summon materia able to cast the summon twice - so maybe you can manipulate the number of possible castings until you reach the Max.  But once again...I'm far too rusty to be able to provide any definitive answers.  Clearly the others posting in this thread know more, but I thought I'd add my hazy recollection of my own experimentation with Materia in WM.

EDIT  Just remembered, I have successfully added Effects to Purple materia for use with Added Effect materia pairing.  So for example, I'm pretty sure you could make an HP Plus Materia that when paired with Added Effect could add the Poison status to your weapon or armor.  And you can make "Blank" materia that carry Elements and Statuses.

 

[Tenko Kuugen]

changing the number-of-use in the kernel for red materia does absolutely nothing
and its 1-2-3-4-5 uses for 1-2-3-4-5 stars.

 

[nfitc1]

Tenko is correct. The game completely ignores the 2nd - 6th modifiers on the materia.

 

[xLostWingx]

Does that mean I imagined my one star Summons casting twice per battle?  It's entirely possible lol, I just wanted to be sure.

This is inspiring me to experiment with materia modifications again.  I have so many mod ideas, so little motivation to bring them to reality,

 

[Tenko Kuugen]

Does that mean I imagined my one star Summons casting twice per battle?  It's entirely possible lol, I just wanted to be sure.

This is inspiring me to experiment with materia modifications again.  I have so many mod ideas, so little motivation to bring them to reality,

yes, you imagined that.

 

[Vgr]

Wouldn't you be able to cast a summmon twice if you had two level 1 Mat- wait that's not possible, unless you cheat.

I wasn't aware modifiers 2-6 were ignored for red Materias. But then again, if you have to put 65535 to remove a value, I wouldn't be surprised if some modifiers weren't used.

 

[Gingercat]

Heh, shows how rusty I am, thinking Steal and Steal-As-Well are in the same family

So if the number of summons-per-star aren't in kernel.bin, where would they be stored? They've gotta be modifiable somehow (unless they're hard-coded in the exe; I've seen stuff like that happen before!)

Another question, hopefully simpler: If I want to change the order of the items on the Enemy Skill materia so that the stuff I use / plan on using are the top commands and don't have to scroll every time, is that a possibility? Two ways come to mind: being able to edit each skill's attack ID (ie, swap Frog Song's ID of 72 with Beta's ID of 84 to swap them so Beta is now first list item with ID 72), or edit a game-menu file that contains the specifics that these attacks are [currently] listed in-order.

Changing the Attack ID seems like it would break the scripts for the enemies that use those skills, so those scripts might also have to be edited to reflect the new ID...

 

[nfitc1]

I wasn't aware modifiers 2-6 were ignored for red Materias. But then again, if you have to put 65535 to remove a value, I wouldn't be surprised if some modifiers weren't used.

Only the red materia (and that's acceptable plurality) ignore the other modifiers. All other materia faithfully use theirs. Entering 65535 is just a bug in WallMarket.

I spent a lot of time making this page to answer these questions. Paying attention to the support materia modifiers; those are the only allowed values. We can't just add other features without exe modding.

So if the number of summons-per-star aren't in kernel.bin, where would they be stored? They've gotta be modifiable somehow (unless they're hard-coded in the exe; I've seen stuff like that happen before!)

There in the exe. It counts the number of stars the materia has and adds that to the total of "allowed castings"

Another question, hopefully simpler: If I want to change the order of the items on the Enemy Skill materia so that the stuff I use / plan on using are the top commands and don't have to scroll every time, is that a possibility? Two ways come to mind: being able to edit each skill's attack ID (ie, swap Frog Song's ID of 72 with Beta's ID of 84 to swap them so Beta is now first list item with ID 72), or edit a game-menu file that contains the specifics that these attacks are [currently] listed in-order.

Changing the Attack ID seems like it would break the scripts for the enemies that use those skills, so those scripts might also have to be edited to reflect the new ID...

This is incredibly complex due to the issue you mention. Imagine if the Touch Mes did Beta and Zimzelet did Pandora's Box!

 

[Tenko Kuugen]

there aren't that many enemies that use the enemy skills
manually copy pasting them from enemy to enemy is not that time consuming.

 

[nfitc1]

there aren't that many enemies that use the enemy skills
manually copy pasting them from enemy to enemy is not that time consuming.

There aren't that many enemies, but there are a lot of instances of those enemies in the various scenes. Trickplay and Malboro are in two different scenes and can perform their ESkill in different conditions. Every Chocobo can do Chocobuckle too (14 scenes). I didn't say it was impossible, just complex due to the number of edits it would require. By that I mean complex to the point that I don't think the end result would be worth it. But that's just me.