Imzogelmo's Propsal for FF1 spell data template

[Imzogelmo]

I have it taking a whole 2 bytes (which is really overkill, it could be a few bits). 65536 possibilities there...
It could be delegated to a series of bits, maybe 4, which would still leave 16 possibilities (which is about all I can imagine at the moment for sphere).

Actually, that brings up an interesting point. How easy/difficult would it be to have multiple accesses to the same data? A lot of times you need a field that is only 1 byte, so it would be handy if you could have the same field be 1, 2, or 4 bytes depending on how it was used. I'm talking, of course, of unions. Perhaps even making a basic type that is a union of 1 4-byte integer, 2 2-byte shorts, and 4 1-byte char entries. That could lead to problems in portability though, so I don't know.

[CJC]

It could be delegated to a series of bits, maybe 4, which would still leave 16 possibilities (which is about all I can imagine at the moment for sphere).

This is what I meant. It looked like a lot of the two bytes was empty space, and the one-bit assignment for sphere felt a little constraining. Even allowing just three bits would give a total of eight possible classifications for spell sphere, which would cover pretty much all the classic forms of Final Fantasy Magic. Adding the fourth would allow people to assign spheres to 'magic' abilities, such as a list of martial arts 'spells' that only one character uses.