Modders have found the ORIGINAL pristine FF6 GBA version ROM hidden within FF6 Steam Edition's source code, which is going to be the key for modders to mod the game upAbout the FF6 GBA ROM buried in the source code:
Final Fantasy VI’s PC port was definitely not built to be fiddled with. Modders are doing it anyway. And unlike the typical PC port, Final Fantasy VI contains a surprise secret: a pristine copy of the Game Boy Advance ROM buried in its source code.
"Final Fantasy VI is sort of unique compared to the other Final Fantasys on Steam," said modder Christopher Cooper, who goes by the handle Krisan Thyme online. "Square actually have a copy of the original Final Fantasy VI inside the Steam release of Final Fantasy VI, and what they do is reference the original copy as a database to pull information such as cutscenes, where sprites are located, how the map is constructed, item stats, AI. It references all the stuff out of the original game, pulls it out, and constructs it in the new engine. It's pretty cool stuff, honestly. From a programming perspective it's a really clever solution to remastering the game, as opposed to remaking everything from the ground up. They just take the data from the old version, and render it out in a supposedly prettier way."
Jen's mod to mod FF6 Steam:
Modder Jed Lang, who goes by the handle Nyxo, has been leading the charge for VI modding with a tool he calls FFVI_Explore. Lang is the reason modders know about that ROM buried at VI's core. FFVI_Explore, which he released the first version of 12 days after the game hit Steam, was the breakthrough that allowed other modders to start digging into FFVI’s files. Lang’s tool extracts the game’s .obb container into its source files, laying bare sprites and tilesets and music and all the rest to be modified.
“I want to crack the game open and provide the tools for somebody else to do the mods,” Lang told me when we chatted over Skype. “I have a keen interest in the data and how it's structured and abstracting that for the modders so they can get to the modding. I don't want them to have to know the nitty gritty details of where the byte goes and that sort of thing. I don't really have that much of an interest in doing the modding myself.”
Lang is unusual among modders—he has no great ambition to change Final Fantasy VI to meet his own vision, but simply enjoys the challenge of understanding how the game works. By day he works as the lead developer at XGen Studios. In his spare time, he’s improving FFVI_Explore to make it easier for modders to tinker with the game.
