[Other] Move effects issue

Hey all, I am having issues implementing new moves into firered. As a preface, I am using MrDs rombase patch that adds fairy type, split, etc. I like the selection of moves added but I want to add more, so I wanted to make a damaging move that has a chance to harshly lower opponent's special defense (Seed Flare). I tried using Gen 3 Tools to directly edit the move, and made it have the metal sound effect, which would have the same status effect; however, when I did this my move no longer did damage. After more looking around in G3T, I find out that Acid Spray, a move that does damage and lowers spdef by 2 stages was added in the patch. But the problem is it has the same status effect as psychic (chance to lower spdef by 1 stage), but is still able to lower opponent's spdef by 2 stages in game. I copied the acid spray values and mirrored them in my seed flare move, but when I load up the game it only lowers opponents spdef by a single stage. So then I used HxD to locate seed flare's hex values and mirror them to reflect acid sprays; again when loading up the game it only lowered the opponents spdef by a single stage, even with the same hex bytes (for reference, seed flare's byte is 48 78 0C 64 14 64 00 00 32 00 01 00 and acid spray's is 48 28 03 64 14 64 00 00 32 00 01 00). So I am curious as to why if they both have the ladder's byte line, why is it only acid spray the drops spdef by 2 stages. So, my question is, how can I get an attack to lower an opponents stats by more than a single stage while still doing damage, utilizing the hex editor or G3T? Also an off topic question, what program/tutorial could I use in order to merge move animations (eg; making the screen shake using earthquake's animation and flamethrower's animation running at the same time for a single move)?

I can't really help you on the first issue since I haven't used the patch myself but for the side note at the end I may be able to help. A fair deal of move animations end in the bytes 05 08. If you overwrite the 05 08 with another move's code it will play both the animations at the same time. Keep in mind, if the attack just ends in a 08 byte with no 05 then overwriting it will only cause the second animation to play after the first.

For example, here's a Dragon Pulse animation I made by fusing Refresh and Aurora Beam together using the 05 08 replacement.

https://gyazo.com/133a53483411b4fadb8dadf5b97456ba

Appreciation of the reply man, also great animation! While your response does answer one of my questions, it also opens a few more. I understand that both 05 and 08 are used in moves to determine animations, but where can I find a list of animations used for firered? Or is it a trial and error process..? Also, how do you determine which animations are used for each individual moves in a Hex editor? Because if I were to search 05 08, I get several results, which also would mean that is a trial and error until I locate my selected move on accident. Also if it helps, I previously found out that by changing the value of the first byte (eg; 48 for seed flare example) will change a moves effect. So, if I were to change the 48 in the seed flare line in a hex editor to something such as CC, my spatk now harshly falls after I damage the opponent. To my understanding, this would be the same issue as the animation question, where a certain values equal certain effects in game. I just dont know where a resource like that would be found, if they exist at all.

Chainbody said:

Appreciation of the reply man, also great animation! While your response does answer one of my questions, it also opens a few more. I understand that both 05 and 08 are used in moves to determine animations, but where can I find a list of animations used for firered? Or is it a trial and error process..? Also, how do you determine which animations are used for each individual moves in a Hex editor? Because if I were to search 05 08, I get several results, which also would mean that is a trial and error until I locate my selected move on accident. Also if it helps, I previously found out that by changing the value of the first byte (eg; 48 for seed flare example) will change a moves effect. So, if I were to change the 48 in the seed flare line in a hex editor to something such as CC, my spatk now harshly falls after I damage the opponent. To my understanding, this would be the same issue as the animation question, where a certain values equal certain effects in game. I just dont know where a resource like that would be found, if they exist at all.

Click to expand...

So, a really easy way to find animation offsets and repoint them is by using Pokemon Game Editor, or PGE for short. In that program, you will have something called an Attack Editor. It looks like this:

https://i.gyazo.com/a1ff3e8dc420542c466262bc6ca66cf6.png

Changing the effects and stats is all really straightforward. Animation editing can be a bit complicated though and you will have to do a lot of trial and error.

So let's say I want to change the move Slash, for example. The code for Slash's animation can be found at this offset labelled "Animation Pointer"

https://gyazo.com/8f1a20772edaed6cb2b910f052d01f26

Enter this number into a Hex Editor and you will see the code for the move, Slash. You will also see a lot of other codes. What you can do to pinpoint slash specifically is copy about 5-6 rows of code starting from right where the offset in PGE took you to and paste it into free space. Write down a copy of the original offset so you don't forget it, and then repoint the Animation Pointer to the offset of the free space you just pasted that copied Slash code to. Most likely, it will just play the Slash animation. However, you have likely copied more bytes than necessary and, while this is harmless mostly, it will prevent you from having extra effects at the end of the animation. So you could add something to the beginning of Slash like a background, but you wouldn't be able to make the background go away at the end because you wouldn't have an isolated code for just Slash.

What I suggest doing is erasing up to the next "08" byte repeatedly until the animation stops working. The moment you erase a 08 byte that causes the animation to break, you've found where the animation ends. So, let's say I copied:


I would gradually remove parts of the code (stopping at each byte ending in a 08) to see what isn't part of the animation.

Eventually I would be left with this:


This is the code for Slash in Fire Red. Now we can make changes to it. You'll see that it ends in 05 08, meaning we can overwrite it to have multiple animations play in succession.



We'll call this move Triple Slash. If you insert this code into free space in your rom, it will play three slash effects with the mega punch background.

Details on how to change backgrounds and do many other cool things with animations can be found in this thread:

https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=281520