Is it possible to do this?

[CelestOrion]

I was stricken by an idea earlier, based on an item in one of my RP's. This item is able to procure any item imaginable from it.

What I am wondering is if it's possible for an item in Golden Sun to work in the same fashion: multiple uses, but when used, randomly has the effects of any item and/or Psynergy. This function would only work in battle, of course.

If not, would a skill be able to be used in a similar fashion?

[Rolina]

You mean like the Metronome ability in pokemon?

Eeeh... I dunno.  I mean, coding that sounds like a nightmare, given that even the original games, with all their abilities, had tons of dummy data to separate things.

[CelestOrion]

You mean like the Metronome ability in pokemon?

Somewhat along those lines, yes, but only pertaining to items.

[Griever]

Like Role said ... that's gonna be a nightmare to code ...... hell i think even Atrius will have problems with it >_<

[Rolina]

Well, in the most bare bones version, I imagine it'd be really really easy.

Just one problem.  You're going to have to fill every single slot with an ability for that.  In a realistic game, you'll never need that many abilities, even if every class and enemy has unique skills.  As such, there's probably going to be a bunch of dummy data... which means there's a very good chance the item will call that, which means it does... nothing.  Coding it to be useful in such a scenario sounds like a nightmare unless atrius can find some kind of flag for it to look for.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

This function would only work in battle, of course.

with all their abilities, had tons of dummy data to separate things.

Does any of the dummy data have the  "Can be used in battle" flag checked in the ability editor? If not, couldn't you check for that, and then if the code sees that it is not checked, just randomly select another?...

[Rolina]

That might work.  The dummy data has that set to false - which irritated me on many occasions when I wanted to test a psynergy and forgot to check that box.  If Atrius says it would work, then I don't see how this can't happen.

[CelestOrion]

Another minor question pertaining to what the game could do/not do.

Is it possible to have symbols from the Greek alphabet be in the text strings? For instance, if I wanted to name a particular weapon "BanswordΩ", as a final version of a character's introductory weapon.

Just curious, nothing relatively serious.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

You would need to edit the pixel data of the font to do that, I think?  The editor doesn't support this, I don't think.

Anyway, In VBA.. if you go to Tools -> Tile Viewer.. select Char Base 06010000 you should see the font at the top. (It's like two characters go together... do note that Golden Sun's text is compressed.)

Each set of letters contain two tiles side by side.. so they may look chopped up a bit.

EDIT: I think it would be quite hard to add the new special character in without overwriting/losing some important data. (?)

Edit again: I forgot to say that I didn't know how Golden Sun's Compressed format works.. but I could work on figuring it out if I used the editor. (Simply locate differences from an original ROM and an edited ROM.)

[Rolina]

I don't know... are those in the font data?  I mean, they're common enough now that I'd not be surprised if the font itself actually had it already, just not viewable or selectable...

[CelestOrion]

I know that the font included some special characters for the summon tablets, yet I haven't been able to find the actual text of those readings in the editor as of yet. I thought maybe there was something similar in one of those special characters.

[Rolina]

Hmm... I've never tried, but does ctrl+v work in the editor?  You could easily find out if it's included if you do that...

[CelestOrion]

I tried pasting the 'Omega' character, but it only shows up as a '0'.

[Rolina]

Then that's gonna be a no.  Unless atrius develops a way to import new text options, I'm afraid you'll have to temporarily use the word Omega as a placeholder.

[Salanewt]

You would have to be wary of the possibility that these "characters" might actually be some form of sprite or graphical effect. I have seen it happen before, where graphics a have been made to look like text because regular text was incapable of doing what the characters could do easily.