Problem with enemies who change in battle

[Fauntleroy]

Having more Chrono Trigger hacking woes.

I have no idea how I triggered this, but now, any enemy who changes in battle (like the shield guys, the rock enemies that turn into volcanoes, gold birds that change into red birds, etc.) crash the game when they change.

This is something that happens with all enemies of this type.

I tried fixing it by importing the enemies from a fresh ROM, and making sure their battle AI had not accidentally been edited. But neither of things are the source of the problem.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[Mauron]

So all transforming enemies crash, including ones that were set up previously?

What have you been using to edit the ROM?

[Fauntleroy]

Yep, all transforming enemies crash the game, full stop.

I've been using Temporal Flux exclusively, except for three instances where I used a hex editor:


• Changing which single techs are usable from the menu
• Changing the battle AI of the Frog King (I made him do nothing but stand there)
• Changing the battle AI pointer for Magus enemy #2 (pointed it to R Series and changed the graphics in Temporal Flux to be a pink R Series clone)
  

I've added objects to a few areas, and some of these are enemies, but I haven't added any objects to maps where transforming enemies appear. I also didn't create any new transforming enemies.

[Mauron]

Any Temporal Flux plugins?

Can you do a file compare in a hex editor between your ROM and an unaltered ROM, and list any changes between 0x10000 and 0x1FFFF?

[Fauntleroy]

Thanks for your help.

I'm using pretty much your entire suite of plugins: Fiendcrafter, Hi-Tech, Inventory Manager, Itemizer, NPCustom, Warrior Workshop.

In comparing ROMs:

• 010000 to 014614 is the same
• 014615 to 014756 is almost totally different
• 014757 to 01FDDD is the same
• 01FDDE to 01FFFA is almost totally different
• 01FFFB to 01FFFF is the same

[Mauron]

0x014615 is a change made by Hi-Tech when player techs have their animations modified. 0x1FDDE is free space that was used by something that no longer fit in the original space when modified.

Send me a patch, I'll recreate the crash in a debugger.

[Fauntleroy]

You are bomb.  Merry Christmas!

I'll send you a patch. The base ROM is Chrono Trigger (U) [!].

The crash is triggered by enemies on these maps:

125 - Dactyl Nest, Lower
126 - Dactyl Nest, Upper
1BD - Prison Stairwells
1EA - Forest Maze
134 - Black Omen 1F Entrance
13D - Black Omen 47F Royal Ballroom

Thank you again so much!

[Fauntleroy]

Just making sure you got the patch. I sent you a message through the board with a download link.

Thanks!

[Mauron]

I got it. I'll test it later.

[Mauron]

I haven't fully found the problem, but it's not all transforming enemies, it's enemies using transforming using enemy tech 7D. Ogans work fine, and I suspect Bantam Imps will as well.

[Fauntleroy]

Yes, you're quite right. Bantam Imps are good.

Looks like it's just the shield guys (Guardia Prison and Black Omen), the birds in the Forest Maze, and the rock guys in the Dactyl Nest.

[Mauron]

I've compared all known data on Shists and Enemy Tech 7D, and there's nothing different.

The crash is caused by something not being set right in animation processing that causes an infinite loop.

What this means is there's unknown data relating to animation processing that got corrupted that I'll have to track down.

[Fauntleroy]

I'm sorry.  You've been very kind.  I didn't realize it would be such a trial to track this down.

[Mauron]

Finding unknown tech/animation data is always helpful for me, so it's no problem.

[Mauron]

It was not unknown data, it was a glitch with the modified animation data that occurred when an animation started on an address with the low byte being 0xFF, 0xFE, 0xFD, or 0xFC. I'll update Hi-Tech shortly to fix this.