A fellow sprite hacker shared notes with me on how they leveraged two special patches that modify FFIV to allow deep event editing and to even add an extra playable character to the game.
Th “shadow party” hack gives characters extra memory space so they can leave and rejoin the active party throughout the game quite fluidly. Even Cecil can leave, which normally is not possible!
On top of the “shadow party” hacking, Whitenoise81 also repurposed the battle spites used for the “piggy” status and removed the spell and its status entirely. This approach offers a new character slot in the game’s graphics, and permits adding a new player character to the game!
All quote blocks are from Whitenoise81. Where I’ve added my own words to recreate our convo, they’re verbatim and “italic in quotes”.
That is one thing the original game never really did. Outside of special cutscenes, Cecil is always there. This also makes it so you are not limited to the small amount of "solo battles" there are. you can create more simply by removing party members instead of hiding them. Thats how i did the Sea King fight in Kaipo where Anna and Edward fight together. I could reserve one of those original "hide the other party members" solo battles for an occasion when I have a character that doesn't have a shadow (in my game Baigan) is in the party. (the shadow could be manipulated to save Baigans data instead of someone else but only has 13 slots) I do hate that I have to choose between Baigan and Golbez but I have so much more to work with. (I have technically added 2 new playable characters to the game but it cost doing away with one version of Cecil as well as doing away with the Pig spell. Other modders could add 1 new character by simply sacrificing one or the other of these. I would Imagine most would go with Golbez. Just that the "Pig" option means that the 14th character doesn't have a shadow.) Also that mod by Grimoire that adds the ability to use "IF/Then instructions" makes it possible to free up some event space
Here is the “Shadow Party patch”, by LightPhoenix iirc. Whitenoise81 used this plus GrimoireLD’s “If/Then” mod that sets up conditional logic (more notes on this to come).
The “shadow party” is a way to store the characters exp level and other data when they are not in the party.
Theres something interesting I just thought of too. because of the mod that adds the if/then event command you could technically make a few scenarios where you add an extra party member for part of the game where you normally dont have a full party. Like how you find Shadow in a couple of places in ff6. you can then make any events that would show the whole party only make that npc visible if their in party flag is on.
“I think I follow you on this; so it would offer the extra party member if there was space available but they'd be inaccessible if there was a full party??”
well it can be easily done. the thing about ff4 is that at any given point in the game, who would just be wandering about freely like Shadow was? That npc would then of course be deactivated after the period of time in the story that they should be elsewhere. … All that said, I suppose the only reason to make an optional party member throughout the span of the game would be if you were going to more drastically change the story. (I think I just talked myself out of doing it lol) BUT, it Can easily be done provided that you have a shadow mod and the if/then instruction mod.
Adding another playable character:
So, about the 14th character which would technically be Golbez. You can assign magic to this character but it can only use it during battle. When you view his magic list in the menu there is nothing in there even if you have a fully populated magic list assigned for battle. so, my idea for cosmetic purpose here was to not give him magic at all (for me this is Baigan because i used FuSoYa for Golbez). But unlike the other 13 characters, even with no magic menus assigned you can "view" magic lists even though he has none, instead of it saying "cannot use”
… the job name shows up as "FightIt" because the job names end with the lunarian. You have to relocate the job name text elsewhere to have one or two more.
at any rate. if you wanted to do the most basic version of adding a 14th character specifically Golbez and you dont really care that much for one of the others, say FuSoYa you could just swap their full sprites and do the cosmetic changes in 4rkster i believe there is also at least 20 more levels worth of unused levelup data. you could make him start on lvl 30 instead of 50 or something
Like writing entirely new scenarios with characters that would never be there. Also, allowing Cecil to leave the active party!
as for my person mod. well ive made some neat things happen so far. Mentioning them here because a shadowmod made it doable.
- everyone has the same exp curve
- I’ve made it so characters that will be joining the party soon are stealth-added/removed from the party about 1 dungeon ahead of when you get them. This activates their exp gain. (no more edge at lv25 when your party is 30+ etc)
- Cecil, Kain, and Rosa start on lv 1
- Rosa joins at the start of Misty Cave and is separated at Mist like Kain.
- After the vanilla sahagan vs Edward fight at Kaipo, a boss sahagan attacks and Anna has joined in to help. (you can remove her weapon to get something early, maybe a dancing dagger or something) then she does her speech and walks outta town instead of ghost floating away. the other party members werent hidden in that fight, they were removed and re added after. (you can create your own solo battles without relying on hiding the party)
- Baigan joins at Baron Inn and leaves after escaping Zot. Naturally I couldnt stealth add him because he is the only one without a shadow.
- Edward joins when you find him in Troia and plays his harp directly in the dark elf crystal room. After Tellah falls, Edward stays with him and urges you to go save Rosa. Cecil walks over to Kain and activates that series of events. (i combind "top of tower of zot events" with "kain regaining his senses" and freed up an event here)
- when you use the magma key, yang shows up saying a disturbance like that could have only been made by you and then he joins. Now your party is what it was normally when you enter the underground the first time.
This is fundamental proof of how much can be done when using these patches to create a “shadow party”. It’s really incredible to me the amount of freedom a romhacker has to adjust the FFIV story now, and pretty much reshape the game into something quite different.