Question about expansion

[-X-]

I haven't been really editing FE games for very long, and as such I realize I still have a long way to go. I've read through a lot of tutorials, and I have a sort of 'play' edit where I just randomly put things in to make sure I understand what I'm doing.

One thing that I really don't get though, is the idea of expansion. I don't see a lot of questions so it seems like something that should

be really really simple. I understand there's a lot of free space at some adresses...but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of it.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea of expansion, but it seems like there should be a way to make more of it, hence expansion?

I suppose I thought that for some reason or another, one could apply a patch to a game to create more space.

Although I do suppose 0x0FFFFF0 should be the last entry logically, any help would be appreciated!

[Jubby]

Even better, using this: (http://www.zophar.net/utilities/hexutil/windhex.html) hex editor (probably some others, too, I'm not sure) you can just click Tools, Increase/Decrease ROM size, and then choose how much space you want to add :) You could use it to trim your rom down too, if you add too much space.

[CT075]

You go into HxD, go to offset 0x1000000, and just start mashing the "0" key repeatedly.

[-X-]

Thank you for your responses :), I generally use HxD, and I understand expanding it now. I swear I looked through those options more than once, I guess it just didn't register. I appreciate the help, are there any ramifications of expanding that I should be aware of by chance? I assume really I can put stuff in wherever I want (Preferably orderly), there isn't anything that honestly necessarily needs to be in a certain place I would hope?

[Celice]

Thank you for your responses :), I generally use HxD, and I understand expanding it now. I swear I looked through those options more than once, I guess it just didn't register. I appreciate the help, are there any ramifications of expanding that I should be aware of by chance? I assume really I can put stuff in wherever I want (Preferably orderly), there isn't anything that honestly necessarily needs to be in a certain place I would hope?

I think for the basic GBA game, up to 32MB is the max range for the pointers to address. Haven't looked at that system in ages though. But, that is a SHIT LOAD of space. Especially for just a fan edit.

You go into HxD, go to offset 0x1000000, and just start mashing the "0" key repeatedly.

wow

[CT075]

For a GBA ROM, you have until your ROM hits 32 MB. You also have a block of free space from D00000 to E00000. You shouldn't take up that much space unless you try to fit in, like, every chapter of every FE released to date in there (and you could still probably do it if you manage your tables and shit properly). Only thing you need to remember is that most things need to be at an offset ending at 0, 4, 8, or C. Why?

i dun know lol

wow

hey hey hey, that is the quick and dirty way of expanding. Most of the hacking tools around will do it for you :<

[-X-]

Alright thanks guys, Like I do see a lot of free space clearly, but there are random lines of all 00, then a random 18.

To be honest I couldn't really tell you what is free space and what isn't. From what it appears on the line D00000 to about D20000 is quite a bit of stuff in there, and I assume that has to be for something?

I mean I figure regardless of where the free space is, I'm really not in danger of modifying any useful data if I just add on to it

[Celice]

If you expand the ROM, all the new space is unallocated. Thus, unused, and free to be used however you please. The existing, unexpanded ROM image can have some unused or empty chunks of data that can also be used. Unless you know exactly what you're overwriting, don't overwrite existing data. You're going to fuck something up if you rummage in pieces of things you don't understand.

You can watch where the game reads data from when its processing code, and this can give you an exact idea of what ranges are used for what and how. Also, since the graphics format many games use is documented, you can visually see areas which are graphical data (another trick would be to find pointer tables by recognizing how they appear graphically when skimming through a ROM). But not everything is something to be guessed over, especially when some data isn't always accessed at all times in the game. You might overwrite something you thought wasn't important, only to find out a couple weeks down the line, your game continues to crash because that data you overwrote earlier is no longer available, and the game suddenly needs it for something you didn't anticipate. It's far safer for you to just play around in the expanded, dedicated ranges you create past the 16MB mark.

Just make sure you add on to the file when you expand. It's not gonna be a fun idea to suddenly balloon the ROM up from the middle-outwards D:

[CT075]

To be honest I couldn't really tell you what is free space and what isn't. From what it appears on the line D00000 to about D20000 is quite a bit of stuff in there, and I assume that has to be for something?

Well, the problem with just tacking stuff onto the end is... well, okay, there's no real downside. But it's been proven, nothing in the game references the D00000 area, at all.

(When I say 'proven', I mean both with a debugger and the fact that we've been writing shit to that area for ages with no ill effects)