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This came up at another forum, and I wasn't quite sure of my answer, so I was hoping one of the FF6 codemonkeys around here had the definitive answer.

Can you double the MP you earn per battle by having two discrete methods of spell learning equipped? The obvious example would be doubling up Ragnarok magicite with Paladin Shield, but using something like Ifrit + Flame Shield or Carbunkl + Force Shield would illustrate the principle too.

For the record, I didn't think it would give you 2x, but I frankly am not basing that on much.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 26th August 2005 14:02

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

I don't have the means to confirm this currently (and will do so when I get home tonight) but...

If I recall correctly, the game's code iterates through equipped espers and items one by one and applies the points to each individually. I can't think of many cases where this would be possible (as there are very few items teaching spells to begin with) but it definately should be possible.

I'll check when I get home to make sure.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Yeah, this is true, Paladin Shld/Ragnarok is probably the most well-known instance of this. I haven't studied this thoroughly, so I'll side with Rune in how it works. The last time I saw the code was in finding the variable for the Cursed Shld's battle counter I believe, which was quite a while ago.

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The Unoriginal White Sheet

-Master ZED

Apparently shields are the only items capable of teaching spells. And yeah, shields and espers are fully independant.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote (Silverlance @ 26th August 2005 14:32)

Apparently shields are the only items capable of teaching spells.

Cursed Ring. Teaches X-Zone x5.

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The Unoriginal White Sheet

-Master ZED

Quote (Silverlance @ 26th August 2005 16:32)

Apparently shields are the only items capable of teaching spells. And yeah, shields and espers are fully independant.

Does that count as confirmation of the theory that you do get double points?

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

The second bit does. I was just quickly browsing through a list of items. Apparently I missed some.

I do confirm that the game handles espers and equipped items seperately.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I'll confirm as well that this does indeed happen. I tested it a while back with the tortoise shield and the esper "stray", and my spell learn rate was the sum of both contributing parts.

Is it really double the amount, or simply the sum of the magic points you'd collect with different items?

With Paladin Shield and Ragnarok, you'll get Ultima X1 two times, so it's a no brainer that it would double your magic points, but what happens with the Flame Shield (Fire2 x5) and Maduin (Fire2 x3) combination, or the Force Shield (Shell x5) and the Alexander (Shell x10) combination? If the game does indeed discriminate between Espers and equipment, then you should respectively get x8 and x15...

This post has been edited by Mr Thou on 30th August 2005 09:35

I'll test it after work today sometime, but I'm 99% sure that it's the sum of the parts.

Quote (Master ZED @ 26th August 2005 16:37)

Quote (Silverlance @ 26th August 2005 14:32)

Apparently shields are the only items capable of teaching spells.

Cursed Ring. Teaches X-Zone x5.

Are you serious?! After all these years, I never knew that since it doesn't say when you equip it. I always thought that if I kept it equiped I'd break its curse like the Cursed Shield?

'tis a common misconception, bad andy. the cursed ring can NOT have its curse broken like the cursed shield. all it does is teach x-zone and give you condemned status. nothing else. just to clear things up.

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"Fire and steel
follow me through the lands
you will burn hordes of hell
in the deadly raging flames of revenge"

Rhapsody - Flames of Revenge

I just never knew it taugh X-Zone. I never really used the ring to begin with and just stuck with Magicite.

Yea, that kind of thing passes up fast when its on an item without any real benefical use... Well, i have to say i never would of though to use 2 items to increase my learning skill of a particular item. Its something so simple and obvious, but (through human nature) we simply pass it up.

A question rises, however.

I know that when you match or go over 100% you learn the spell. What would happen if the first item increases it to (or over) 100% and the second item boosts it even further? Would the entire thing reset? Very unlikely, but i wonder if anything special or different happens.

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Its not denial. I'm just very selective about the reality i accept. ~Calvin and Hobbes

Yah, i dont post much if you havent noticed. I'm not used to large fourms so i usally lurk and post every now and then..

Quote (Retribution @ 30th August 2005 21:33)

Yea, that kind of thing passes up fast when its on an item without any real benefical use... Well, i have to say i never would of though to use 2 items to increase my learning skill of a particular item. Its something so simple and obvious, but (through human nature) we simply pass it up.

A question rises, however.

I know that when you match or go over 100% you learn the spell. What would happen if the first item increases it to (or over) 100% and the second item boosts it even further? Would the entire thing reset? Very unlikely, but i wonder if anything special or different happens.

This is just a guess, so I'm sure Dji, SL, or MZ can button it down just a bit more. My thought is that the variable that stores that information has a capacity of (2^7)-1, the 7 being the first power with capacity over 100. If that's the case, it probably would be okay until it had Magic Points greater than 127 and would then probably reset.

Or, they could have done a simple check to see if MP > 100 and simply not do the addition for any subsequent values, which I assume is in the code anyway.

Edit

Also, I realize the confusion about double magic points. I meant that as in "double the opportunity to add magic points," not "double the specific quantity." My bad.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 31st August 2005 11:20

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

The value is stored as a byte. That is, a value ranging between 0 and 255. When it hits 100 or more, the game sets it to 255 and makes the spell learnable. Normally, the game would never allow you to learn 156% in a single battle, so this cannot normally happen. But if it were to happen, you'd have to sit through a few lines of technobabble to know what really goes on behind the scenes.

The 65816 has a number of special values that tell it how to treat the numbers it is working with. One of these values, the carry flag, is set when you go over the size of the unit you're working with (a byte in this case, ie, 256 or more.) This can be useful if you want to work with values other than 8 or 16 bits (the two sizes the SNES can work with) because then you can just add this carry bit to the next byte.

Ram $1200 = 255.
Ram $1201 = 3.
Player gains 4 doo-zongles!
Ram $1200 = 255 + 4 = 259, roll back to 3 and set carry to 1.
Ram $1201= 3 + Carry = 4.
Final values in memory: 0x03 and 0x04.

One of the 65816's instructions is called "Branch if Carry Set." Basically this tells the 65816 to do special code if the carry bit is set because a number went over, say, 255. Typically when adding numbers, a game will add the numbers and check if the carry flag was set. If it was, then it'll set the number to the highest value and leave it there.

This is why the SNES's numbers don't roll back (in properly programmed games at least) as much as the NES's do.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Another thing learned in Final Fantasy 6!

This game seems to have an ubeliveabley massive amount of little tid bits O.o

I always assumed that when you had something like this, however, that it would just simply take the one that gives the spell at the higher rate over the one that gives the lower, and doesn't add togther. Great, now I gotta go see if someone didn't learn Fire2 or Shell and do this just to see it ...

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"A little tight, but the price was right" - Locke
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"..." - Shadow
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