Final Fantasy III: Status Timers Hack

This hack add timers for Slow, Haste, Safe and Shell when cast on characters or monsters. It use 4 free bits on the expired status byte ($B8) plus a byte per monster and character for each of the 4 new timers ($3E38, $3E39, $3E88 and $3E89). Right now, there is no easy way to know when those 4 timed status are lifted on a monster but that will be deal with in another hack. All 4 timers have a value of $1E, so they last longer than Reflect but shorter than Freeze. The new timer values can individually be edited in the bass asm file. There is a compatibility version of the patch available to work with "Independent Stop" by seibaby as well as "Premature Continuation fix" by assassin.

|----------------------------------------------|
| Status Timers Hack |
| by: madsiur |
| version: 1.0 |
| Released on: February 14th, 2022 |
| apply to: FF3us 1.0 (no header) |
|----------------------------------------------|

|----------------------------------------------|
| Files |
|----------------------------------------------|

status-timers-nh.ips: IPS patch for vanilla ROM
status-timers.asm: bass assembly file of the above hack

status-timers-stop-nh.ips: IPS patch for Independent Stop/Premature Continuation fix compatibility
status-timers-stop.asm: bass assembly file of the above hack

|----------------------------------------------|
| Description |
|----------------------------------------------|

This hack add timers for Slow, Haste, Safe and Shell
when casted on characters or monsters. It use 4 free bits
on the expired status byte ($B8) plus a byte per monster
and character for each of the 4 new timers ($3E38, $3E39,
$3E88 and $3E89). Right now, there is no easy way to know
when those 4 timed status are lifted on a monster but that
will be deal with in another hack. All 4 timers have a
value of $1E, so they last longer than Reflect but shorter
than Freeze. The new timer values can individually be
edited in the bass asm file.

There are two hacks; "status-timers" is for vanilla ROM
and fix the same bug as "Premature Continuation fix" by
assassin (link below), only it does at a different place
in the code. "status-timers-stop" implement the "Independent
Stop" code by seibaby (link below) as well as the original
"Premature Continuation fix" by assassin. Use "status-timers-stop"
if you already have applied or want to apply those two hacks.

Both hacks use 202 ($CA) bytes of free space at $EEAF01.
This free space offsets can be changed in the bass asm file
by changing the offset of the "seek($EEAF01)" macro call.
Both hacks use no free space in bank $C2 but instead relocate
the "check timers" routine from $C25B06 to $EEAF01 to make
room for the new "set Slow/Haste/Safe/Shell" bank $C2 code.

To assemble the hack use bass v14 by typing a command
such as "bass -o rom.smc status-timers.asm".

|----------------------------------------------|
| Timers length (reference) |
|----------------------------------------------|

Sleep: $12 (original)
Stop: $12 (original)
Reflect: $1A (original)
Slow: $1E (new)
Haste: $1E (new)
Shell: $1E (new)
Safe: $1E (new)
Freeze: $22 (original)

|----------------------------------------------|
| RAM changes (previously unused) |
|----------------------------------------------|

$B8: Current entity's expired status byte
bit 0: Stop (original)
bit 1: Reflect (original)
bit 2: Freeze (original)
bit 3: Sleep (original)
bit 4: Haste (new)
bit 5: Slow (new)
bit 6: Shell (new)
bit 7: Safe (new)

$3E38,x: current entity's Slow timer
$3E39,x: current entity's Haste timer
$3E88,x: current entity's Shell timer
$3E89,x: current entity's Safe timer

|----------------------------------------------|
| Links |
|----------------------------------------------|

bass v14:
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/794/

Premature Continuation fix:
http://assassin17.brinkster.net/patches.htm#anchor27
`
Independent Stop:
https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/thread-3389.html

Database match: Final Fantasy III (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210222-050638)
File/ROM SHA-1: 4F37E4274AC3B2EA1BEDB08AA149D8FC5BB676E7
File/ROM CRC32: A27F1C7A