what's the deal with powers.dat?

[oktokels]

Why does everytime i try to modify powers.dat always brings errors to the game? I'm not trying to add new powers, just modify the existing ones, and still it gives me problems. The AI stop working and then i can't even enter the game, a "memory shortage" error message appears when i try to open the game. Good thing i kept old backups from powers.dat that i can replace, but still is a bummer that i can't do the things i want to do with my characters. 

[spydermann93]

In which ways is it messing up for you?

Are you trying to modify powers with a python script? Just FFEdit? Did you add a ton of custom powers to the file?

[oktokels]

In which ways is it messing up for you?

Just a series of problems, like the AI stops working and then i cannot even enter the game, because a error message pops up at the title screen.

Are you trying to modify powers with a python script? Just FFEdit?

Just FFEdit.

Did you add a ton of custom powers to the file?

Nope, i just modified 3 existing ones. The last one i modified was one of those "ZZZ94" powers at the bottom of the list.

[oktokels]

For anyone interested, i made a few tests, and i suspect the problem was that i can only modify powers with the "ffx_" prefix, not the "ZZZ" ones.
Cheers.

[spydermann93]

And only the ffx_ powers? None of the normal powers?

That's... very strange. I wonder if FFX3 expects powers to be of a specific size? Not sure why they would.

[oktokels]

And only the ffx_ powers? None of the normal powers

No, sorry, i didnt change any of the normal powers, only the "ffx" ones and the "zzz" ones. When i changed the "zzz90" power, the game crashed.

A question: When you are editing powers.dat in FFEDit, there's a field for selecting an animation. If i put the name of an animation that the current character doesnt have, for example, i left the field with "area" animation selected, but the character doesnt have "area" animation. Could that be the cause of a game crash or a powers.dat crash?

[oktokels]

Update:
Sometimes the game will create a powers.dat.bak in the data folder. This file corrupts the normal functioning of the ffx code. That's the core of this problem.
Everytime a powers.dat.bak is created, i need to delete it to have powers.dat function correctly and the new powers created too.
Cheers.

[BentonGrey]

That's really strange, Ok, as the powers.dat.bak files I've seen haven't messed anything up with my build (that I know about).  I could see messing with the zz powers causing problems.  That's monkeying with some of the FFX stuff that I don't think you're supposed to change.

[oktokels]

That's really strange, Ok, as the powers.dat.bak files I've seen haven't messed anything up with my build (that I know about).  I could see messing with the zz powers causing problems.  That's monkeying with some of the FFX stuff that I don't think you're supposed to change.

Yes,  normally the power.dat.bak file is created every time the game is played. Sadly for me, everytime a new power or modified power is used in game, the powers.bak file created proceeds to corrupt the function of my game.

I took the powers.dat.bak thing from the FFX Manual, specifically in the next part:

Note on the following functions:
There isn't a nice way to keep a clean (unrewritten) version of powers.dat without writing wrapper functions for FFedit, EZHero, and any other function that might write changes to the file. Adding further complication, it is possible to use those programs while the game is running. Therefore, after using those programs to change the powers DAT, be sure to delete any powers.dat.bak (or .bak2, .bak3, ...) files from the mod folder.

So, this is not directly related to the problem i'm having, but i just gave it a try and deleted every .bak file i have in the DATA folder. The game errors vanished and my new and modified powers were working, so i'm ok with it  The thing is, now everytime i use one of my new powers in game, then i need to delete powers.dat.bak when i exit. 

[BentonGrey]

Whoa, I never noticed that note!  I suppose I should start doing that on my end and see if it improves performance.