Grond's Final Fantasy++ and WoC Reproduction?

teoma · Post by **teoma** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 1:58 pm

This is more a question of curiosity at this point. There is a FF1 hack by Grond called FF++. What makes this hack unique (among other things) is that the World of Chaos addon is also a FF1 hack and uses the same save memory as the original. In other words, you beat FF++, and then use the same save game to start a new game in FF++WoC.

Is it possible to reproduce this effect on a cart somehow? The only things I can think of is either custom build a cart with removable memory, or try to fit both in a single rom, like a hacked ff1+2j. The only commercial game I can think of that has ever done something like this is sonic3/s&k for genesis.

I don't really have time to mess with this right now as I'm working on the Hebereke hack/translation. Just throwing it out there for now - any ideas?

kyuusaku · Post by **kyuusaku** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 3:45 pm

You could easily burn both games to the same ROM and switch between them with the highest address line (A18 for 2*256KiB) Naturally they'll both use the same SRAM.

teoma · Post by **teoma** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 8:41 am

So all I'd have to do to make it pretty is write some sort of title/menu screen, preferably one that only unlocks WoC once it sees in the SRAM that you beat FF++. Only problem is, if both games are packed to the brim, even if I double the rom size and combine them, would I still have room for a title menu?

never-obsolete · Post by **never-obsolete** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 9:31 am

if both games use the same chr data, you could expand that and store all the extra title screen stuff there. just keep the loader routine in rom and load menu code to ram and execute from there. ff1 should initialize ram so the game will remain uneffected.

dvdmth · Post by **dvdmth** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 10:09 am

If you merge the two ROMs into a 512K chip, you'll need the SUROM board to play the result. It should be fairly easy to add the 256K switching to the code, provided there's enough space (the original FF has quite a bit of space, but the space may have been used up in making the hack).

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 5:28 am

if both games use the same chr data, you could expand that and store all the extra title screen stuff there. just keep the loader routine in rom and load menu code to ram and execute from there. ff1 should initialize ram so the game will remain uneffected.

- FF1 is one of the very few commecrial games that does not initialise RAM at all
- FF1 makes heavy use of CHR RAM, so there is no such things as CHR data

Why not just play the hacks with PowerPak, as you can manipulate SAV files with your PC and play on the real hardware with the Powerpak ?

teoma · Post by **teoma** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 1:02 am

The point is to make something that looks more or less genuine. I would be designing my own cart label too. This is more for retro nostalgia value then anything else.
Nothing can compare to the joy of shiny gray plastic.

Grond · Post by **Grond** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:55 pm

Whoa, I just stumbled in here and found this topic...

teoma, I'm impressed that you're considering doing this. I have wondered myself if it ever would (or could) be done. I had also thought about that FF1&2j cart, whether its menu could be used in some way... I'm very interested to see what you come up with.

Perhaps you could even be so kind as to make me a copy

I'd be willing to pay a reasonble price, naturally. Of course, I understand that's a ways off yet.
(For myself I think I'd prefer to hold off on getting my own hard copy until I've prepared 100% definite, final, complete versions of the hacks. Notably, there are still some bugfixes from the GameFAQs FF1 board that I haven't gotten around to implementing yet. Also, I'd still like to change much more of the music in WoC, as daunting a task as that would be.)

At any rate, let me know if you need any help with this (not that I'd likely be much help; I know next to nothing about NESdev).

teoma · Post by **teoma** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 4:06 am

Perhaps you could even be so kind as to make me a copy

I was planning on getting mine done by the guy at http://nesreproductions.com/.

I'm not serious on doing this yet - still working on Hebereke (see my other topic). Just brainstorming for now. It would be cool though.

also thought about that FF1&2j cart

As I am learning, it may be easier just to make a new menu from scratch. Or maybe a 'New Game +' type option on loading savegames. It would be nice if a 'first quest complete' bit was written to the saveram if you beat the game once, which would disable loading/saving in FF++ and enable it in WoC.