anyways, since my resurging interest has all but taken over my mind, i decided it was time to take a 2nd shot at hacking a rom sav file. when you use a .GB rom with a gameboy emulator that had a battery save feature, the game would create a .SAV file. FFA is one such game. my first attempt at mapping a .SAV file was when i was obsessed with Sword of Mana for GBA. i figured out where things were saved, but i couldn't just change those particular values. if you did that, reloading it would cause the save file to appear corrupt, and you couldn't load it.
one of the things i was doing wrong was that i wasn't using a hex editor. i made a program that would compare words and i was (stupidly) outputting the change amount instead of the actual values before and after a change.
so i've got most of the .sav file mapped out for FFA now. i've even written an editor that let you change .sav file values (within limit), but it was limited to the info i had at the start. i know what most of the .sav file does now, and so i could definitely write a more complete editor, but right now i'm looking at mapsets and event flags. i still haven't figured a few little things out yet, and i have to actually play through the game before i can figure those things out.
the (unrealistic) goal right now is to create a "more than you'll ever want to know about FFA" page containing as much of the things i've found out as i can cram into it. i'm not sure about copyright issues and whatnot, because the bulk of the info is actually the data. the project is really a learning exercise for me, more than anything else. if i have to drop the content then i can still write a data-free version and still have come out of it knowing all the new things i found out.
back to my .sav dumps!
I haven't played it in years -- I hope the SRAM battery is still good.