Research: X and Y positions of textbox?

Well I have been interested in this for quite a while now. While completely pointless it would still add something quite unique to your game. Now what I was meant to ask and maybe would help research if we found offsets in the ram or something of the x and y offsets for the textboxes location on screen and if you would need a routine for keeping this permanent. I was speaking with ZodiacDaGreat about this and he seemed to think it would need some extensive ASM. I may have explain it bad though as it may have sounded if I wanted to appear like this only sometimes... But I am not too deep in ASM yet. I know some simple commands such as push, pop, load, etc and the registers and such. So maybe someone such as Juan or Interdpth could give an opinion?

----------

What I would think of doing is placing a break for when the textbox appears and see if we could pinpoint the X and y locations in the disassembler. But if we did this we probably would need to find the X and Y locations of not only the textbox but all which goes in it. The individual letter spaces etc.

Thanks and I hope this doesn't sound like a quaint pointless idea.

well...this is just a guess...i'm going to say that the x position is "0" for easiness sake. BUT the gba screen 9x 240x160, divide that by 8...30x20, we know that the textbox takes up 4 "rows" in a tilemap, so take away four from our 20. 30x16= 480. So, in tilemap terms, the position (notice the lack of x/y specifier) is 480. so yea....there isn't really an x/y co-ordinate so to speak, if there was though, it would be 0x16 (not hex,but like XxY) no, this is not for certain, like i said, just a guess.

Full Metal said:

well...this is just a guess...i'm going to say that the x position is "0" for easiness sake. BUT the gba screen 9x 240x160, divide that by 8...30x20, we know that the textbox takes up 4 "rows" in a tilemap, so take away four from our 20. 30x16= 480. So, in tilemap terms, the position (notice the lack of x/y specifier) is 480. so yea....there isn't really an x/y co-ordinate so to speak, if there was though, it would be 0x16 (not hex,but like XxY) no, this is not for certain, like i said, just a guess.

Click to expand...

Wow I completely forgot it must be in tilemap form as in Tilemolester they just use the simple amount of tiles etc. But still that must mean we could find that? ;P

The Doctor said:

I've managed to accidentally move my textbox into the top left corner. :)

Click to expand...

Ooh ooh, did all the text still work though? Since my theory is the text has different data just telling where it places it on the screen no matter where the text box may be.

care to share how u did that --or fixed it-- ?
and panda....since the text and textbox are on the same pallette, plus going off the screenshot that doc gave us, i would expect to find that the text is put onto the screen relative to the textbox.

The Doctor said:

Here's a screenshot of the aforementioned problem. http://i46.tinypic.com/2nq7hat.png

Click to expand...

Looks like a nice start. I would also wish to know how you did this

Full Metal said:

care to share how u did that --or fixed it-- ?
and panda....since the text and textbox are on the same pallette, plus going off the screenshot that doc gave us, i would expect to find that the text is put onto the screen relative to the textbox.

Click to expand...

You are right probably. I am interested more in Ruby with this so I believe Firered uses this method you state. Not sure of ruby though (Probably same xD)

The Doctor said:

I was messing around a lot in a hex editor and tile molester. But, I guess I can try to replicate it.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, well in Ruby they structure a lot similarly so I bet it wouldn't be much different. But did something screw up in the pallet on yours or did you just not edit it yet?

The Doctor said:

I hadn't edited it yet. :P

Click to expand...

Ooh, that splains it then :). So looks pretty cool then. I suppose you would figure out how to move the Oak over also and his lil stand :).

IIRC the messagebox gets set to memory address 2001840 then throw into 0x600fb80

I decided to eat dinner after I found that out, i'm sure further enlightment will follow

interdpth said:

IIRC the messagebox gets set to memory address 2001840 then throw into 0x600fb80

I decided to eat dinner after I found that out, i'm sure further enlightment will follow

Click to expand...

Wow sounds cool yet I am not yet capable of making this all out hahaha. I still am learning more advanced stuff but thanks for the memory address. Ill tweak around a bit with that! Maybe I can ask Zodiac some more about this now.

By the way is this Ruby? Or Firered and that such.

So Im not exactly an ASM genius (in fact IDK any ASM) but I would assume that you can make variables and plug them in like as a more traditional language. So if you find the location of the coordinates, you can potentially change it in-game via the d pad. You can create a function that takes in the input of the d pad and then replacing the old coordinates with the new one, but IDK what that would do... its pointless, a text box you can move... LOL

davidthefat said:

So Im not exactly an ASM genius (in fact IDK any ASM) but I would assume that you can make variables and plug them in like as a more traditional language. So if you find the location of the coordinates, you can potentially change it in-game via the d pad. You can create a function that takes in the input of the d pad and then replacing the old coordinates with the new one, but IDK what that would do... its pointless, a text box you can move... LOL

Click to expand...

Well if this theory was possible then I assume you could implement a feature with ASM to the settings where you can place the textbox where ever you would like around the screen

So it would be posssible to have a textbox on top of the screen?
What else will they make :)

Is anyone working on this? If not I wouldn't mind doing so.

Darthatron said:

Is anyone working on this? If not I wouldn't mind doing so.

Click to expand...

Go for it Darcy! *But on Ruby first :3*

Tee Hee! I Figured it out on fire red, and I'll try and find it on ruby.

The textbox data is stored at 0x020204b4. The amounts all relate to the amount of 8x8 squares. It goes in this format:

byte: Unknown
byte: Text X position. Textbox follows
byte: Text Y position. Textbox follows
byte: Text X amount. Textbox follows.
byte: Text Y amount. Textbox becomes cut open. Never modify.
byte: Text properties (I have yet to figure this out, but it changes font, background, ect.
6 bytes: unknown, and havn't found any functions relating to them.

Try opening VBA's memory viewer and fiddling with the values. Your text box will be at your command :)

This offset doesn't seem to work. Can you give me offsets of code associated with it?