New Materia

  • Thread starter Thread starter Masa-Buster
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
There's definitely room in kernel.bin for new spell menu locations, the difficulty lies in making the executable recognize them and display them somehow... which entails changing *alot* of things... it's so funny to think how, if the original source for the game were in our hands, a task like that would probably be as simple as modifying an integer or two...
 
I gave this a lot of thought way-back-when and discovered some....problems with it.

#1. Attack IDs are stored sequentially in the KERNEL.BIN (it's just the way I always type it and I've noticed that no one does that either :( ) and the "Spell Order" only allows for 54 slots in the magic menu. Those last two slots do absolutely nothing. I'm not sure what they're for, tell the truth.

#2. The Magic menu both in and out of battle will have to be extended from 54 to some multiple of 3 (57, 60, 63, etc). I played around with looking for this and the closest I got was in the window.bin, but in the most bizarre turn of events, the value 54 is only used ONCE in the entire 33,312 bytes of the uncompressed window.bin file. Ergo, I don't think the size of the menu is located here. It could be somewhere else, of course. Several references to 18 exist (the number of rows in the magic menu).

#3. The KERNEL.BIN would have to be made larger if the magic menu were to be added on to. This is not a hard feat, but the game's load sequence would have to be edited to accept the enlarged KERNEL.BIN Spell Order section.

#4. Adding more than two spells would mean displacing all the other attacks after it. This isn't difficult, necessarily, but that means re-pointing a LOT of things. Start indexes for all the other menus. Adjusting the Relative Animation Index increment table for account for the displaced Indexes. Re-pointing EVERY limit break for every character. For the PC version at least, as long as the new magics don't displace "Blade Beam shock wave" past 127 this wouldn't be an issue.

#4a. If it did displace further than 127 (eight or more attacks to be added), the KERNEL.BIN would have to be further enlarged to have more than 128 attacks in the attack data section.

#4b. Same "if" as 4a; Several attacks would have to be edited to reflect these changes. Satan Slam, Blade Beam, Choco/Mog, Zantetsuken, etc because they use the "Perform XX attack after condition Y" effect. Each "XX" would have to be changed for these.

#5. The KERNEL.BIN would AGAIN have to be enlarged to hold an extra name/description of the attack. This isn't bad for the PC users, but this means instant no-go for the PSX users as the barely under 11 block KERNEL.BIN would likely grow too large (153 extra bytes is too large for this file).

The list went on, but those are the main points I couldn't get around.
 
I gave this a lot of thought way-back-when and discovered some....problems with it.

#1. Attack IDs are stored sequentially in the KERNEL.BIN (it's just the way I always type it and I've noticed that no one does that either :( ) and the "Spell Order" only allows for 54 slots in the magic menu. Those last two slots do absolutely nothing. I'm not sure what they're for, tell the truth.

#2. The Magic menu both in and out of battle will have to be extended from 54 to some multiple of 3 (57, 60, 63, etc). I played around with looking for this and the closest I got was in the window.bin, but in the most bizarre turn of events, the value 54 is only used ONCE in the entire 33,312 bytes of the uncompressed window.bin file. Ergo, I don't think the size of the menu is located here. It could be somewhere else, of course. Several references to 18 exist (the number of rows in the magic menu).

#3. The KERNEL.BIN would have to be made larger if the magic menu were to be added on to. This is not a hard feat, but the game's load sequence would have to be edited to accept the enlarged KERNEL.BIN Spell Order section.

#4. Adding more than two spells would mean displacing all the other attacks after it. This isn't difficult, necessarily, but that means re-pointing a LOT of things. Start indexes for all the other menus. Adjusting the Relative Animation Index increment table for account for the displaced Indexes. Re-pointing EVERY limit break for every character. For the PC version at least, as long as the new magics don't displace "Blade Beam shock wave" past 127 this wouldn't be an issue.

#4a. If it did displace further than 127 (eight or more attacks to be added), the KERNEL.BIN would have to be further enlarged to have more than 128 attacks in the attack data section.

#4b. Same "if" as 4a; Several attacks would have to be edited to reflect these changes. Satan Slam, Blade Beam, Choco/Mog, Zantetsuken, etc because they use the "Perform XX attack after condition Y" effect. Each "XX" would have to be changed for these.

#5. The KERNEL.BIN would AGAIN have to be enlarged to hold an extra name/description of the attack. This isn't bad for the PC users, but this means instant no-go for the PSX users as the barely under 11 block KERNEL.BIN would likely grow too large (153 extra bytes is too large for this file).

The list went on, but those are the main points I couldn't get around.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's a real pickle. Would you excuse me for a moment?

*yells out indistinguishable profanities*
 
Say someone hypothetically got this to work, what materia would they make? Other then ZOMG! that is
 
Even if you were able to expand the magic menu to add a new materia would you have to have it so you start off with it at the begging of the game or would you be able to pin point a location to find your newly created materia
 
Say someone hypothetically got this to work, what materia would they make? Other then ZOMG! that is
Click to expand...
Wind and Water would be my priorities (see my second post in the thread  :-P). In my game, they replace FullCure and Exit ATM. I suppose one might also want to make Strength Plus and Vitality Plus.
 
So the only way to make new materia is to place the other materia am i correct or is this topic trying to create and put in new materia with out replacing another one
 
Actually, the answer to both your questions is yes. We want to make new materia without replacing anything else, but we can't. :|
 
I wish I knew how to do that Wind/Water material that you made Kudistos. But it sounds complicating and I know nothing about editing this stuff so yeah.  :oops:
 
What I did isn't very complicated at all :3

All it took was replacing some values in WallMarket; if I'm in a good mood tomorrow (it's 6:45 on Tuesday here, but it's Monday night to me :wink:), I'll tell you exactly what I did, but now I'm going to play Fate/Stay Night and then go to bed. brb :-P
 
Last edited:
What I did isn't very complicated at all :3

All it took was replacing some values in WallMarket; if I'm in a good mood tomorrow (it's 6:45 on Tuesday here, but it's Monday night to me :wink:), I'll tell you exactly what I did, but now I'm going to play Fate/Stay Night and then go to bed. brb :-P
Click to expand...
Alright, cool. Sounds awesome, I look forward to it!  :-)
 
Ok well replacing materia with another is easy with the right tools now making one with out replacing is more complex. hmm ok so what bin is all the materia in?
 
All materia info is in the KERNEL.BIN other than placement in the field.

There are about a dozen blank materia. Almost any of these could likely be created into something as long as it were referenced somewhere like a shop or the field.
 
Actually, the answer to both your questions is yes. We want to make new materia without replacing anything else, but we can't. :|
Click to expand...
I think what I said here was a little misleading (i.e. wrong). We can make new materia without replacing anything, but we can't give it any new effects without replacing something (that is to say, we can't make magic materia with completely new spells; we have to replace old spells).
 
I knew what you meant, but I thought it prudent to clarify that new materia for materia's sake is possible to create. It might be interesting/important to note that magic, summon, and several command materia needs to stay as is since they're used to create Master materias. You could still create more magic materia, but if you want the Master Magic to reflect it, that's yet another issue to resolve. :(
Still, you could create different materia. I always thought a low-level, mid-level, high-level materia was in order.

Low-level:
Fire (initial),
Ice (100 AP),
Bolt (200 AP),
Quake (350 AP),
MASTER at 1500 AP

Mid-Level:
Fire2 (initial),
Ice2  (1000 AP),
Bolt2 (1500 AP),
Quake2 (2400 AP),
MASTER at 5000 AP

High-level:
Fire3 (2500 AP),
Ice3 (6000 AP),
Bolt3 (9000 AP),
Quake3 (15000 AP),
MASTER at 15000 AP

Then Contain has the "Ultra" level spells. The AP would likely have to be increased and the spell power would have to be adjusted to account for the later acquisition of Ice and Bolt. I think this would be a more natural progression (So you can't get, say, Ice3 before you are able to buy an Fire materia) so long as you don't allow access to the high-level too early in the game.

This is the issue I'm talking about. Mastering this won't count toward a Master Magic unless you replace Ice, Fire, and Bolt materias with these. Then to keep the game balanced you'd have to get rid of all references to Fire, Ice, and Bolt materias until later in the game. This would even free the Quake materia to contain up to four new spells!

This would also likely mean no early Beta learning since You'd have to take the elemental attribute off of these materia. That is, unless you want to give elemental attributes to command materia... Ya know, this is starting to be a really good idea. :D
 
I added a "Horology" spell to my game. The game's damage calculation options actually supports doing damage equal to the number of minutes on the game clock. After some digging, I realized the only monster who uses this method of damage calculation is the Tonberry (who you virtually never encounter outside of the gold saucer) with the attack "Time Damage". I used the same animation (which looks awesome, btw) and renamed it "Horology" and added it to the end of "Time" materia. This is just an example, though, there are tons of spells that the game can use... "Blind", "Aero/Aerora/Aeroga", "Water/Watera/Waterga", "Drain", "Holy", "Dark/Darkra/Darkga", "Petrify/Stone"... with some Kernel.bin AI editing, it might even be possible to make a "Zombie" spell or a "Grow" spell (opposite of "mini").
 
Last edited:
I made a "blind" spell as well :-D

And about "Zombie"...

Wouldn't that require modding the AI of every single enemy that's weak against it?

Or at least modding the AI of every character so that they can set themselves as the enemy and changing their elemental strengths and weaknesses? Sounds like a lot of work; you'd also have to figure out a way of making some enemies immune to it, or players will be able to get two hit kills on any boss (that might be the easiest part of getting zombie to work :roll:).
 
Haha, that's very true. It'd certainly be a lot easier to make it one of the "affects player character only" spells, but that would sort of defeat the purpose. (although being zombie could entail nullifying physical damage)

I tried to do this actually, but gave up after I decided that if it were going to work that way it might as well be an equip-able item...hence the "Zombie Brace"! Nullifies all physical damage and health when equipped. Steal-able from Gi Nattak and acquirable at the gold saucer chocobo races! (who needs a "Precious Watch", anyways?)
 
Last edited:
Ok quick question how come when you open wallmarket121 there is empty spaces in the spells and in the materia so you cant just enter in a new spell and a new materia instead of replacing one i been at it all day tryin to figure it out if some one has some valuable info i would really like to hear your reasons y it wont work or how we can get it to work
 








So as you can see i tried to make a new material without replacing another and just starting of the game with it equiped using wallmarket its equiped but it just doesn't seem to show up in magic screen or in battle in thoughts on this?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top