Development: Longer names

Introduction
It came to my attention that some Gen VI items names are too long to fit into the 13 characters allocated by the Generation III games, Mega Stones in particular. So I thought, "Why not hack the limit?".
This basically works by having the first word of an item be 0xFFFFFFFF, and the next word being a pointer to the new, longer name. This makes it backwards compatible with the old item table (Only longer items need be repointed) and compatible with tools (They'll show a blank name due to the first character being 0xFF). This method should work for any other names I try to extend, but I'm kicking things off with items.

Table of Name Lengths
I tried to make this as accurate as possible. If you notice anything that is incorrect, please comment with an example name (and the new length). This will be used as a target for any adjustments.

Longer Item Names
This hack just changes the code. The tilemap for the status screen needs to be altered to fit the code changes, but I'll just post offsets for the tiles and tilemap in the hope that some kind soul changes the tilemap and posts the hex for it here (hint hint).

Wow! This is really I wanted to see. I have been always wondering if we can extend the limit of names. Will you also do it for Pokemon, Moves, and Abilities as well?

Sky High said:

Wow! This is really I wanted to see. I have been always wondering if we can extend the limit of names. Will you also do it for Pokemon, Moves, and Abilities as well?

Click to expand...

I will definitely investigate them. Some of them (like Pokemon) aren't exactly feasible due to the number of restrictions on space. But abilities should be fairly easy. Moves might also be a challenge due to the sheer number of interfaces they appear in (Bag, Move Deleter/Reminder, Status screen, Battle, etc.). But items weren't as hard as I expected to be, so who knows?

Here's an image to replace the one at 0xE9A460 so that item names look okay in the status screen: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r18n26nv3cc9bhy/@.bmp?dl=0 You need to use 1A for the x position with this.

Oh, hey, I've wanted something like this for a while!

I can't really help because I have absolutely no idea how to ASM, but I do want to point out that, while Fletchinder is the longest Pokemon name and has 11 characters, I'm pretty sure the limit is actually 12, because that's how many characters you can write while nicknaming something.

Z-nogyroP said:

Oh, hey, I've wanted something like this for a while!

I can't really help because I have absolutely no idea how to ASM, but I do want to point out that, while Fletchinder is the longest Pokemon name and has 11 characters, I'm pretty sure the limit is actually 12, because that's how many characters you can write while nicknaming something.

Click to expand...

I don't doubt that it is more. Project Pokemon says it's actually closer to 23 characters, but if the nickname interface gives 12 spaces, then that's probably the maximum that it will ever go. Thanks for that information; I'll change it in the table.

What about your character name?
Never could use my first name, 'cause it's only 7 digit long...
Possible to change its limit too?

FamiliaWerneck said:

What about your character name?
Never could use my first name, 'cause it's only 7 digit long...
Possible to change its limit too?

Click to expand...

The OT Name is stored in the Pokemon Data, which means we are limited by that for length. Since there is limited space in that structure, we could only get about 2 characters extra. However, I want to use that space for longer Pokemon Names, so I don't think this is going to happen.

Touched said:

I will definitely investigate them. Some of them (like Pokemon) aren't exactly feasible due to the number of restrictions on space. But abilities should be fairly easy. Moves might also be a challenge due to the sheer number of interfaces they appear in (Bag, Move Deleter/Reminder, Status screen, Battle, etc.). But items weren't as hard as I expected to be, so who knows?

Click to expand...

Yeah! Items are very easy. I bet Abilities and Moves will come first before Pokemon. You might wanna change the "naming" part and it would be too hard. Oh! Adjusting Pokemon names might also ruin saves at all (unless planned to move them). Forgot to tell also if you would be able to adjust the limit of Player (and Rival, for FR) names. Oh dang! That would be also a ruination to save data.

Touched said:

The OT Name is stored in the Pokemon Data, which means we are limited by that for length. Since there is limited space in that structure, we could only get about 2 characters extra. However, I want to use that space for longer Pokemon Names, so I don't think this is going to happen.

Click to expand...

No problem, just wondering if that was possible. Thanks Touched!

This is fantastic. With this change, does it effect editors? Or will they still save the same amount as before? Not quite sure if it makes it go down to a certain # of characters because there is no room or because its programmed that way.

Criminon said:

This is fantastic. With this change, does it effect editors? Or will they still save the same amount as before? Not quite sure if it makes it go down to a certain # of characters because there is no room or because its programmed that way.

Click to expand...

This will fuck up editors big time. So depending on how Touched does the Pokemon name adjustment, it may break all editors that dont support different name lengths. Im an idito I was thinking of the Pokemon in RAM, lol. No it will mess up editors unless they support changing of name length. G3HS supports this. Idk if G3T does though. It might. I dont remember....

Although moves, abilities and items probably will only have part of their names cut off.

joexv said:

This will psyduck up editors big time. So depending on how Touched does the Pokemon name adjustment, it may break all editors that dont support different name lengths. Im an idito I was thinking of the Pokemon in RAM, lol. No it will mess up editors unless they support changing of name length. G3HS supports this. Idk if G3T does though. It might. I dont remember....

Although moves, abilities and items probably will only have part of their names cut off.

Click to expand...

That's what I was afraid of. I'm hoping it just does the later vs not working at all. Would be a shame having to do all of those last minute. Regardless, very cool that we have this feature now. Would be nice to see it incorporated into G3HS.

Criminon said:

That's what I was afraid of. I'm hoping it just does the later vs not working at all. Would be a shame having to do all of those last minute. Regardless, very cool that we have this feature now. Would be nice to see it incorporated into G3HS.

Click to expand...

Longer names won't work in tools at all because the first byte is 0xFF (the string terminating character), and will be like this for all of the length adjustment hacks. This should show up as a blank string on most tools. However, the other items (or other names in the future) will be exactly the same and thus will still work in tools. This means that you'll probably have to hex edit the names you want to be longer, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue since it will only be a few names that don't fit into this limit.

This is pretty awesome, but tbh, we "can't" adapt all the graphics to longer names.
And this is the perfect example

Jaizu said:

This is pretty awesome, but tbh, we "can't" adapt all the graphics to longer names.
And this is the perfect example

Click to expand...

Read the fourth post on this thread because tbh, we "can".

daniilS said:

Read the fourth post on this thread because tbh, we "can".

Click to expand...

That was only an example, if you plan to addapt all the images go ahead, that will be nice.

Jaizu said:

That was only an example, if you plan to addapt all the images go ahead, that will be nice.

Click to expand...

For items this is all that needs to be done. If Touched runs into graphical problems while expanding other names, I'll gladly edit those images too because I "can".

Don't know why it makes the screen look like this :(


EDIT: Upon giving one of my pokemon an item to be held, the gender doesn't appear

Congratulations on developing this. The short charlimit on item and move names has always been a thing that has thrown me off when playing Pokémon, in particular since we're no longer in the '80s.