Tulunk Village

IIMarckus wrote: If you are worried about space, you might implement some DTE with the 0xE5 text code and the ~150 bytes of free space in bank 0. This can reduce the length of a commonly‐used string to three bytes in running text. Pokémon games often use this to reduce POKé from four bytes to one.

By the way, I’ve just tried out the patch for the first time, and am very impressed!

Blaziken257 wrote:What is an 0xE5 code? That's the first time I've ever heard of that. Is it some code that takes place at ROM address 0xE5, or is it some custom code with character value 0xE5? And is this unique to Telefang?

Blaziken257 wrote:And that part about $000775 is interesting, I should check that out soon. You can also test that further if you load a save state!

Blaziken257 wrote:And that pointer table is interesting, I would have never found that. The entire pointer is, in fact, from $000549-$00054B, which means it points at 75 D7 CD = ($4000 * $75) + ($CDD7 - $C000) = $1D4000 + $0DD7 = $1D4DD7. Those don't look like Denjuu names to me...

Blaziken257 wrote:And thanks! I'm glad you like the patch! By the way, if you can figure out how to decompress the Japanese tiles right after the title screen, that would be great.

Sanky wrote:$000775 -> 0C doesn't disable all button input, but it makes all buttons weird... I dunno how to explain it, but by pressing left, you press right and select, for example D:

Yeah, you can change where the name pointer points too, but that doesn't make the string any longer ):

andwhyisit wrote:

IIMarckus wrote: If you are worried about space, you might implement some DTE with the 0xE5 text code and the ~150 bytes of free space in bank 0. This can reduce the length of a commonly‐used string to three bytes in running text. Pokémon games often use this to reduce POKé from four bytes to one.

By the way, I’ve just tried out the patch for the first time, and am very impressed!

I understand what you are saying. But is that possible without ASM hacking? All of the 0xE5 codes used non-static variables (variables that can change during gameplay) stored in ram. There are no static variables (variables that always stay the same and are loaded into ram only when needed) referenced by 0xE5 codes.

andwhyisit wrote:EDIT: Oh, and apparently setting $000775 to 0C disables all button input for the game. I would test this further but I can't seem to get past the title screen.

Blaziken257 wrote:What is an 0xE5 code? … And is this unique to Telefang?

Blaziken257 wrote:And that pointer table is interesting, I would have never found that. The entire pointer is, in fact, from $000549-$00054B, which means it points at 75 D7 CD = ($4000 * $75) + ($CDD7 - $C000) = $1D4000 + $0DD7 = $1D4DD7. Those don't look like Denjuu names to me...

3E XX     : ld a, $XX; loads $XX into the a register
D7        : rst $10   ; looks like this switches to whatever bank is in a
CD ZZ YY  : call $YYZZ; calls the ASM function at YYZZ (XX:YYZZ if between 0x4000 and 7FFF)
DF        : rst $18   ; this interrupt most likely returns from a bankswitch
C9        : ret       ; end of ASM string

IIMarckus wrote: The key phrase here is “stored in RAM.” The 0xE5 code is followed by a two‐byte RAM address and prints out the text at that RAM address. Open the memory viewer to $C92C, and you’ll see the player’s name stored there—this is why the bytes E5 2C C9 print out the player’s name.

Since ROM bank 0 is always addressable in RAM from $0000–3FFF, this means that we can take advantage of it for DTE.

This is part of an ASM string that writes to the joypad register… I would say it’s nothing particularly interesting, but feel free to experiment with it if you want. Here is a similar thread about Pokémon Blue doing the same thing.

Yes, this is unique to Telefang. Again, to explain it: The 0xE5 code is followed by a two‐byte RAM address and prints out the text at that RAM address.

That is not a three‐byte pointer, but an ASM string.

Code: Select all

3E XX     : ld a, $XX; loads $XX into the a register
D7        : rst $10; looks like this switches to whatever bank is in a
CD ZZ YY  : call $YYZZ; calls the ASM function at YYZZ (XX:YYZZ if between 0x4000 and 7FFF)
DF        : rst $18; this interrupt most likely returns from a bankswitch
C9        : ret   ; end of ASM string

In other words, this switches to the bank after 3E and calls the ASM function located at the bytes following CD. 0x540 and 0x550 both do this in bank 0x75, but different locations: the former calls $3A01 and the latter $3A1D.

$3A01 is definitely the name‐loading function, but I am not sure about $3A1D. If you feel like messing with some assembly, these functions are located at that location in both ROM and RAM (bank 00 is always in memory, remember).