New Materia

[Masa-Buster]

Is there anyway to add in New Materia?

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

I think this should go in Tech related or Game tweaking

I'm not sure if there are any known ways to add new materia*, but there are a few dummied materia that are never used in the game, so maybe you could replace them with something? I've never tried this myself, so I don't know whether it works (there could be some hidden complications), but it's worth a shot and might be a nice and easy way to add materia to the game.

*Obviously, everything is possible in theory, but it could mean a lot of hard work and reverse engineering of the executable

 

[Masa-Buster]

Well I don't know which Materia to DEVOUR (Evil Laugh) Anyone have any ideas on which is the most usless Materia? I was thinking throw but I use that sometimes.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

No, no, I was talking about this kind of thing; materia that is in the kernel.bin but that has been dummied out and never appears in the game.

If you want to get rid of an actual materia, I recommend Exit. Does anyone use the escape and remove spells? I wouldn't miss Fullcure either (they're the two materia I got rid of when I made water and wind magic)

 

[Masa-Buster]

ah those spots. I was gonna use one of those but then i thoght "Sigh....I think if you put anything here it crashes." Thank you, YOUR MY NEW BEST FRIEND! XD

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

Er, I can't be sure that it'll work... (or maybe you were being sarcastic :|)

 

[titeguy3]

You can absolutely add new materia to the game! I've done this by overwriting the dummy slots in Wallmarket, just be careful because I think some of them actually do something. Only problem is you can't add new spells, and you can't sell it in shops. If you want new materia in game, you're gonna have to use Wallmarket to make a character have it on his/her initial equiment. Alternatively you could also figure out how to work meteor and add it to one of the field maps with that.

Oh, and @Kudistos, I made Exit materia useful in my AI mod... "remove" has the effects of ruby weapon's "whirlsand" attack, meaning you remove allies rather than enemies.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

Yeah, I've just tried it and the game didn't crash (although I haven't checked it in the materia menu because it was a new game).

BTW, I think you should be able to have it in shops. A certain wonderful person found out a lot about shops one day and how to choose what they sell and how much it costs.

EDIT:

OK, I made some new materia, and I've got it working in a shop. Screenies:

And yes, I'm aware that I messed up with its levels :roll:

 

[titeguy3]

That's pretty cool, kudistos! 2 questions:

1. You did this using a hex editor?
2. Did you overwrite the shop slot for some other materia or add a new one in?

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

1. Yep, I hex edited the executable (very safe, if you're only making little mods like this)

2. I overwrote the slots for the other materia; I was too lazy to work out how to add extra slots.

 

[nfitc1]

Yeah, I've just tried it and the game didn't crash (although I haven't checked it in the materia menu because it was a new game).

BTW, I think you should be able to have it in shops. A certain wonderful person found out a lot about shops one day and how to choose what they sell and how much it costs.

EDIT:

OK, I made some new materia, and I've got it working in a shop. Screenies:

And yes, I'm aware that I messed up with its levels :roll:

That's a great name for a Materia.

 

[drfeelgud88]

damn kudistos u beat me to it! was gna suggest to get rid of full cure also cuz i mean, restore is enough already and full cure is OP obviously.

 

[Masa-Buster]

I never knew Full-Cure Materia was in Cosmo Canyon  :lol: Never bothered to find it.

 

[Tsetra]

It's easy until you actually try to add completely new materia with completely new magic spells. The problem is that somewhere, attacks are identified as being a certain type. Even though there are lots of dummied attack IDs, trying to turn them into spells and make them appear (much less function...) is a pain in the ass task.

Summary:


Possible:
New materia with pre-existing spell sets
New materia with new spells, having overwritten previous ones

Not Possible (at least not without pioneering):
New materia with completely new spells

Awhile back I was working on the last one as part of a project I'm working on, which I ran into a wall with and haven't really attempted to break ground there since that's low priority. Still, it would be nice to be able to do and would bring materia mods away from being just a novelty and into a full blown aspect of modding.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

It's easy until you actually try to add completely new materia with completely new magic spells. The problem is that somewhere, attacks are identified as being a certain type. Even though there are lots of dummied attack IDs, trying to turn them into spells and make them appear (much less function...) is a pain in the ass task.

Summary:


Possible:
New materia with pre-existing spell sets
New materia with new spells, having overwritten previous ones

Not Possible (at least not without pioneering):
New materia with completely new spells

Awhile back I was working on the last one as part of a project I'm working on, which I ran into a wall with and haven't really attempted to break ground there since that's low priority. Still, it would be nice to be able to do and would bring materia mods away from being just a novelty and into a full blown aspect of modding.

I had a go at this last night and got the same result. Shame...

I thought it might have been something to do with attack indexes that have been discussed elsewhere, and tried using attack ID 54 (which is currently unused and comes right after player magic and before summons) as both a magic materia ability and a summon materia ability, but it didn't work. The attack name showed up in the materia menu, but not in the magic menu and not in battle

I might try doing something different soon, but I wonder whether it will work.

BTW, what unused attack IDs were you using? There are a few different sets of them in the kernel.bin

 

[Tsetra]

Oh man, it's been awhile I don't even remember. I went through several trying to get different results, but no dice. Several were in the 100s series, and I think I tried the few scattered ones in the double digits that weren't being used. I think you can substitute the choco/mog attack for a magic attack, but then you can't place that elsewhere - because I remember trying to swap that attack around to buy an extra magic attack ID, but there weren't any open summon slots to place the choco attack back into after I had done so.

I wonder if the IDs are stored in the menu.lgp, seeing how they fit perfectly into the magic menu at a predetermined location, and those IDs are called upon and given a title by kernel.bin afterwards. But it's a wild guess, at best.

Edit: Nevermind, just a bunch of textures in there.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

I wonder if the IDs are stored in the menu.lgp, seeing how they fit perfectly into the magic menu at a predetermined location, and those IDs are called upon and given a title by kernel.bin afterwards. But it's a wild guess, at best.

Edit: Nevermind, just a bunch of textures in there.

Damn, I was just about to say that

If they're anywhere, it will be in the executable, since most of the stuff that was in the .mnu files in the PSX version is in there for the PSX version (the shop data is a good example, and just before that in the .exe is the text from the menu).

 

[Tsetra]

Yeah that's what I was thinking/worried about, since the movie IDs are in there as well. I think exe hacks are best avoided, but there might not be a better solution. In addition, it's out of my realm of things I can do.  :x

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

Yeah that's what I was thinking/worried about, since the movie IDs are in there as well. I think exe hacks are best avoided, but there might not be a better solution. In addition, it's out of my realm of things I can do.  :x

Hold on, I've just remembered something! The spell order is in the kernel.bin, and can be edited by WallMarket (initial data ->  Spell Order). I'm going to play with this for a while.

EDIT: My first result was making the game crash as soon as it started, so I can't tell whether it worked :roll:

We also have the problem that messing around with the spell order means that we have to either make the magic menu hold more spells (hard to do, methinks), or replace another spell, which defeats the point of using an empty ID :|

 

[Tsetra]

Yeah, we'd definitely need to expand the menu to hold more spells. Right now it's configured to hold the existing ones and nothing more. This, on top of the spell ID debacle as you pointed out.

More or less just agreeing with you here.