FF8/BattleStructure

By JeMaCheHi

Scene.out contains enemy placement data and flags for each of the game's battle encounters.

See the corresponding thread: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15816.0

Encounter list: Original encounter codes

File Structure

Scene.out contains no header. It is a raw list of 1024 encounters. Each encounter block consists of 128 bytes and has the following structure:

Offset	Length	Description
0x00	1	Battle scenario. The value here corresponds to the number in the a0stg???.x files (into battle.fs file). You have to convert it to hex
0x01	1	Refers to some battle aspects and it works like 8 binary switches (see below)
0x02	1	Still don't know, but I suspect that it has something to do with camera movement. If you set it to 0xFF camera will always be fixed
0x03	1	unkonwn
0x04	1	Visible enemies. Shows an enemy for each bit in the byte. (see below for "enemy switches")
0x05	1	Loaded enemies. Show the enemies that are been actually fought. Loaded enemies will attack you.
0x06	1	Targetable enemies. Show the enemies which will apear in the target window. Careful with this, if you put untargetable enemies battle will never end. (see "enemy switches" too)
0x07	1	Number of enemies. Also works like eight binary switches. See below
0x08	48	Enemy coordinates. Its a set of 6x8 bytes which describes each enemy's coordinate in (x,y,z) format. So, first 6 bytes would be enemy 1's coords, next 6 enemy 2's ones, and so on.
0x38	8	Enemies. Each byte represents an enemy. To know what enemy you're working with, you can check the c0m???.dat files in battle.fs. You just have to convert it to hex and add 0x10. Be careful, if you put numbers under 0x10 as enemies, battle will crush.
0x40	16	unknown
0x50	16	Still under research, but this is usually the same as the previous field's value.
0x60	16	unknown
0x70	8	unknown
0x78	8	Enemy level. Each enemy level is 1 byte. Numbers from 0x0 to 0x64 are fixed levels up to 100. From 0x64 to 0xFF... Still don't know because it makes weird things...

Notes

Each 128block can have up to 8 enemies, but if more than 4 are shown at the same time, the game will crash. This could seem stupid, but it's not. If you think about some battles, like the final battle (where we have 8 enemies), all the monsters are present, but only one or two are shown at any given time. The rest appear through scripting.

Some byte fields are just 8 switches. Here's what I've found:

In 0x01:

• Opcode: 0x069
• Short name: BATTLE
• Long name: Start a battle

Argument

none

Stack

Encounter ID

Battle Flags

BATTLE

Description

Begin a battle with the given encounter id.

Battle Flags

+0: Regular battle.

+1: No escape?

+2: Disable victory fanfare (battle music keeps playing after win/loss)

+4: Inherit countdown timer from field.

+8: No Item/XP Gain?

+16: Use current music as battle music.

+32: Force preemptive attacked

+64: Force back attack

+128: unknown

In 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, and 0x07

+128: 1st enemy relative

+64: 2nd enemy relative

+32: 3rd enemy relative

+16: 4th enemy relative

+8: 5th enemy relative

+4: 6th enemy relative

+2: 7th enemy relative

+1: 8th enemy relative

An important note: If you put an enemy that "summons" another one (Ultimecia summoning Griever, Sphinxara summoning jelleye...) it will summon the enemy from certain slot. This means that if you put that enemy in another battle, it will still summon that slot, because (I think) that summoning is scripted in its AI (in c9m???.dat)