In lieu of the typical project update, I bring you this important announcement: I have moved on to playtesting. In a technical sense, the mod is done. Only a handful of major changes are left, sprites not withstanding, and they're not currently needed to play the game. In that technical sense, the game is fully playable.

As of this posting, I've played up to the siege of Narshe. And so far, so good. Plenty of minor errors, mostly dialogue problems or the wrong sprite being used for an NPC (using the event editor some NPCs have new sprites, so if an NPC tries to nod but their new sprite lacks a nod animation, they turn into Missingno). Only a couple really concerning bugs have popped up, and they've been fixed.

On the gameplay front, balance is good. A couple tweaks here and there, of course, this boss is too strong, this item is too expensive, etc. However, as a whole I'm pleased with how it's turned out. The game is not punishingly difficult, but it's a few notches above the original FF6. So far my balance adjustments have achieved exactly what I've wanted; battles last longer, enemies are more aggressive, and I have to work harder to get through areas safely.

I intend to use the next week to keep playing, hopefully finishing at least the World of Balance. Provided everything is looking okay next Friday, I'll be releasing the mod for beta testing. At the same time I'm using my playthrough to record footage to make a new trailer, and I'll be submitting the project to Equestria Daily to see if they'd post about it.

It's finally happening, folks. We're almost done. Get hyped!

Finally, a concern with the names. FF6's six-character limit has been a real pain to work around. Here are some of the names I could use for characters, let me know which you think is more appropriate.

Twily / Twi
Celest / Tia
F.shy / Shy /
Rainbow / Dash / Dashie
AppleJ / AJ
Sweete / Sweety / Belle
MareDW / DoWell
Cadanc / Cadnce / Cadie

Twi
Tia
Dash
AJ
Belle
MareDW
Cadie

5073477 Seconding 5073654

5073654
5073676 Another option that was pointed out is I don't have to go with the nicknames - there's nothing stopping me from putting "Twilight" instead of the name chosen. The script is just like variables, it subs in whatever you called Terra/Twilight in for "A0" and so on.

However, that would mean that naming characters is a bit pointless.

5074525 There is that.

5074533 I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it takes away the value of letting players name the characters. On the other hand it's quite obvious Celestia is Celestia, and unless players wanna name her something silly like "Sunbut," there's little reason to not just go with Celestia, and then leave the player-chosen names for gameplay stuff.

5074537 The crosses we bear, eh?

Okay, I've updated the names as follows:

Twi
AJ
Shy
Tia
Cadie
Dashie
Belle

I figured "yes, let's use the proper names." However, I'm currently barred from doing due to technical limitations (the game doesn't have enough room in the data allocated for dialogue to fit the full names). If I can overcome this, the names are in.

EDIT - Nope, not overcoming the technical limitation. Oh well.

You could have partially named characters like I did in EquestriaBound. You're able to enter part of their name while the rest is hardcoded.

For instance, when you name Sweetie Belle, the default name would be "Belle" and when she's referenced in text, it would be "Sweetie [name]". If the player were to rename Belle to Bot, it would then refer to the as "Sweetie Bot"

I'm not as familiar with FF6 hacking as EarthBound hacking, but it should be possible to move the text to a blank area of the rom (or expand it) and then have the old text point to the new location. The downside is that text editing tools would stop working and you'd need to put in text the old fashioned way, with a hex editor. (For this, C3F091-C3FFFF is the largest chuck of free space without expanding the rom.)
EDIT: It looks like these pointers should be at 0CE800

5101325 There is a text expansion patch for the rom, yes, but it's hard to know how it would affect my data at this point. And apparently it's kinda glitchy anyway.

I was thinking more "by hand" in which case existing text wouldn't be affected. You would write the new text in a blank area, then change the pointer table at 0CE800 to point to the new location.

As for expanding them rom, I'll take a look later and see if the rom expansion tools for EarthBound work on it. That part should be fairly generic. They at least also work on Super Mario World.

I could, but I frankly suck at coding.

The rom expansion is easy to apply, it's an option with the FF6 editor. It's just that with the other work I've done it's hard to know if it'll work properly.

I'll try and take a look at it after I finish up the art I'm working on. Do you know if FF3usME's source code is available? And if so, what language is it in?

If not, I can try to make a tool on my own.

I don't, sorry. Don't worry about it though, it's not a major concern.