Changing Names via Hex

[sWX]

To anyone familiar with hex editing and the like, I was curious about something. In the Japanese version of ToS, you were able to rename the characters, but this feature (and the Rename Gem item) were removed for some reason when localizing.

I was just curious if it would be possible to still change character names if the appropriate addresses were found. I don't know how far they'd go into the code to remove the renaming feature, but I would assume there would still be addresses to store where the kanji/kana for character names once was, even if it's not accessed in the US version?

Just something I was curious about if anyone with more experience knew if this were even possible.

[sWX]

Update after testing it myself: the locations were actually fairly easy to find within a Hex editor.

I tried changing Lloyd's name as a test, and something peculiar happened.: Lloyd's name was shown to have successfully changed while the save file from "Load Game" was on-screen; however, once the game had loaded this save, his name immediately returned to "Lloyd".

After saving and investigating this new file, it showed that my change had somehow been undone. Since the name was different in the Load Game screen, it wasn't simply a case of not saving the change.

Does anyone know why this would happen? The save appeared to have successfully changed, but perhaps some coding within the game must have set it back once the save was loaded? Does that mean the game is perpetually checking the state of character names, or am I missing something else..?

In the end, it's really not a huge deal, but I find it interesting and would love to learn how it all works.

[Simon]

Ya, my guess would be the coding of the game causing it to reset the name.

[sWX]

More info in case anyone's interested: so much of your save can be edited and the changes will be reflected in-game... Gald, # of battles, GRADE, etc..

However, both Character Names and Order Names (the ability to rename your Strategies was also removed for some reason) can be found and manipulated, but both will immediately revert after the save is actually loaded.

I also found a helpful table of all items within the game, and was able to successfully add them into the party inventory. The "Rename Gem", which could be found in the Japanese version, has an address and ID, but trying to add it (or even more than 1 copy of it) won't show any change to the inventory.

Most people probably aren't too bothered, but I'm fascinated that they would go to so much trouble to remove both the feature, the Item that allows the feature, AND possibly put something in the code to immediately set names of Characters and Strategies back to default if they are different in a save.