Question about TLA (Monster Loadouts)

[Rolina]

...So in simple terms, the answer is no, it's not part of this data.... right?

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Correct. All the data in battle collections has to do with listing encounters and their rarities,,, As well as the rarity that a battle should occur. ; The stuff that links them to maps can use the flag bank and door numbers... There is pretty much nothing else here. So everything else that we would want to look for will either be in a different database, or just coded in pure assembly, etc.

And when you see data actually link a specific encounter/battle in the battle collections... (Like music).. that really proves my point on how GS divides data too much.

P.S. = But when we go into putting this in the editor... I can see this music number being placed in the Battle Collections editor... even though it is a separate database. Atrius has done a similar thing with the Ability Editor. (With including the Animation number and argument. Yes, that happens to be a separate database as well.)

[Rolina]

Well that sucks.  It'd have been nice if you could assign songs to individual groups, so that a particularly rare encounter could get special music.  Oh well.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

I can see these music numbers being placed in the Battle Collections editor.

Fix'd.

As far as I'm concerned, a partically rare encounter can get its own music if you wanted to.

[Salanewt]

What Teawater said. If you are able to expand the battle song database a bit, then you could define more battles for the game to assign other songs to.

[VanishMantle]

I have another question for the Battle Collections/Monster Loadouts. Is there a way to remove the flee function say I wanted to make an area boss later in the game that you can't run from? Also Is it possible to ad an event to a door that happens one time where you fight a boss (similar to how crossbone isle worked in GS1)?

EDIT: Say I was interested in changing various monster collections in the game and I wanted to make it a patch people could use in their mod how would i go about doing that without actually not messing up their ROM. Similar to the 3 reworked Curse Modifier and 9999 HP/PP patch.

[Rolina]

So you want to figure out what triggers the "This is no time to be running away!" message?  That'd be good to know...

[VanishMantle]

So you want to figure out what triggers the "This is no time to be running away!" message?  That'd be good to know...

Spot on Rolina. If i could get that going then i could make some rare fights later on that would be like a true boss.

[Rolina]

We'd probably need to know it for when we want scripted fights anyways.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

I think I checked that out a long time ago. And I believe it was done via map scripts... (If I remember correctly.) Atleast in one scenario where you have a boss fight from a cutscene.

Anyway, I think it sets a RAM value. And this is what activates it. (I might need to look it up again.)

Also Is it possible to ad an event to a door that happens one time where you fight a boss (similar to how crossbone isle worked in GS1)?

Hmm.. I suppose I'll look that one up as well. Though, I must admit, I have a feeling it is also in the map code? I may need to check to make sure, however.

[Rolina]

Well, for such fights, it'd make sense to be in map code, honestly.

[VanishMantle]

I think I checked that out a long time ago. And I believe it was done via map scripts... (If I remember correctly.) Atleast in one scenario where you have a boss fight from a cutscene.

Anyway, I think it sets a RAM value. And this is what activates it. (I might need to look it up again.)

Also Is it possible to ad an event to a door that happens one time where you fight a boss (similar to how crossbone isle worked in GS1)?

Hmm.. I suppose I'll look that one up as well. Though, I must admit, I have a feeling it is also in the map code? I may need to check to make sure, however.

Thanks in advance. If I knew what I was looking for I would look for it myself. Either way that would be a big help.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Well, it would be strongly recommended to have an understanding of thumb assembly. I feel that some people seem to think it's harder than what it really is.

Map Code can be seen in the Map Editor of Atrius's TLA Editor.  In VisualBoyAdvance, the map code files are decompressed to 0x02008000 - 0x0200FFFF.

Anyway, a good breakpoint tool I use is VBA-SDL-H. I breakpoint on anything that is related to the data that I'm looking for, and I investigate. Ofcourse, this takes thumb assembly knowledge to know what is going on.


Sorry for having not looked that information up, yet. (Oops.)

[VanishMantle]

I was not sure if I should have made a new topic or just post here so I'll just post it here since it is relevant to the topic

I want to change the battle collections in the following areas, Sea of Time (Use teleport to reach the second section), The optional Dungeon in the Gabomba Statue, Anemos Sanctum, Treasure Isle, and Taopa Swamp. The reason why I am listing these locations is because I have almost no knowledge of Hex or thumb assembly. I tried looking on my own with and tried to figure out what each of the maps were based off of information provided and just generally guessing but i can't really be sure If I am looking at the right data. I am not asking for someone to do the work for me just any kind of tip on figuring out what specifically pertains to the map and such. Basically a dummies guide to Hex Editing if that makes sense. Once I know how to find a map among the code I can go from there.

I know some tutorials/guides are up on the site but they for the most part are very vague to someone who has next to no knowledge on this sort of thing.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

I want to change the battle collections in the following areas,

For maps, they are done following the below tutorial. However, I will have to take another look at Boss battles, etc.

---

1.) Okay, well, if you are wanting to find the correct battle collection entry(ies), I guess the first step is to figure out the Map Number of the room you want to edit them for.

If checking for it in game, you should go to the map you are wanting to edit, and then check address 02000420 in the Memory Viewer under Tools. (It is in 16-bit); or, you could simply check the Debug Warp Menu if you don't mind converting to hex.

2.) Then look through the list starting at 080EE6D4 to try to find the matching number.

Meh, see the screenshot I have attached. (Take note that the three map numbers in green are for separate entries, since it is 8 bytes an entry.)


;

After following the screen shot, we use the number (Ex: x12, x12, or x10) in a calculation. You can use Windows Calculator in Scientific Mode using the Hex option.

NUM * 1C + 080EDACC

NUM should be replaced with the battle collections number.

Atleast I think that's the start address of Battle Collections.

Anyway, good luck with following the tutorial.


From here on, the rest of the tutorial should be in the first reply of this topic, but for convenience here's a spoiler:
[spoiler] (From http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=135.msg14704#msg14704)

These are the battle collections, as I call them, you can assign 8 groups to each map. Not to mention that in this data, you would be able to edit the likelihood a battle would occur, (You could even disable battles in a map.) As well as changing which of the battle groups are more likely to be encountered than the others. [/spoiler]If you're looking in the spoiler, I believe I forgot to label the last 8 bytes as individual enemy group chances. (14 14 14 0A 05 05 05 00 if viewing via 8-bit.)

[VanishMantle]

Thank you so much for this! I had an idea of what i was supposed to be doing and i felt i was along the right path but I had no real way to confirm this on my own. I'll go take another stab at it and thanks again. I apologize if I came off too harshly.

[VanishMantle]

Sorry about the double post but I forgot to ask how would I edit these values in the map viewer or should i do it with a hex editor.

I managed to be able to a room's battle collections via the memory viewer but how would i find this in like say a hex editor as it seems to display the values in a different format which i am guessing is one with decompressed while the other is compressed. I am not sure as this is the first time i have really delved into this sort of thing.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

You do it in a Hex Editor. When looking through the hex editor, remove the x08****** prefix. ; Everything from 08000000 to 09FFFFFF should match up to 00000000 to 01FFFFFF perfectly. (However, GS2 doesn't use all the available space and stops at 08FFFFFF, if I recall correctly.)

As for the Map Viewer's Hex Editor. It displays the Map Code in its decompressed state where it would appear in Memory Viewer. To note, all compressed data is decompressed from the ROM section to RAM, whenever needed.

[VanishMantle]

You do it in a Hex Editor. When looking through the hex editor, remove the x08****** prefix. ; Everything from 08000000 to 09FFFFFF should match up to 00000000 to 01FFFFFF perfectly. (However, GS2 doesn't use all the available space and stops at 08FFFFFF, if I recall correctly.)

As for the Map Viewer's Hex Editor. It displays the Map Code in its decompressed state where it would appear in Memory Viewer. To note, all compressed data is decompressed from the ROM section to RAM, whenever needed.

Ah I think I get what you are saying I will go through and look at it later. Thanks again so much man you have no idea how much this helps me out.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Yeah, you are welcome.  I feel a bit silly now for leaving that part of the tutorial out earlier. Be happy that the entire section is actually mapped on the GBA, because some systems don't do them that way. (Like the older version of Gameboy (Probably Gameboy Color), where only part of the ROM is memory mapped at a time. (If it helps any, they use 16-bit addressing instead of GBA's 32-bit addressing.) ; The DS doesn't even map the ROM file, however, on boot, I believe they do load into RAM some Header information and ARM7/ARM9 binaries which must be used to load other data from the ROM via I/O.


x2000000 is in fact 32MB, which is the largest cartridge size for the GBA.
Other sizes are x1000000 (16MB) (Like Golden Sun), x800000 (8MB), and x400000 (4MB). I'm not sure if there are any other sizes that ROMs can be, so...