Macro/Books/Pages.

[Krashport]

There was some discussion about this back when they added the <macro> command just over a year ago. Unfortunately, having trouble searching for posts that old--search seems to want to cut off arbitrarily before a certain time frame or something, and Google returns a bunch of crap when I try. However, I did find this:

Just wanted to deliver this message from Producer Tanaka!

We’ve implemented the new macro palette onto the dev. server!



You can now enter up to 8 characters into the macro title box. We were unable to increase the max number of characters you can input in the macro editing menu. However, the title you input will be fully displayed now. If you are using a 1024x resolution or higher with the Windows version or using the HD mode for Xbox 360, these changes to the macro palette will be automatically switch over. If you are using a lower resolution, SD mode, or a PlayStation 2, the size of the macro palette will remain the original size. We weren’t able to launch this onto the Test Server this week, but we will be implementing it sometime next week. I hope you’re all looking forward to it!

Note the sentence that I bolded in the quote. This implies that there is in fact an issue in coding or other resources that make expansion of the macro entry system difficult. I'm wanting to say there was some mention of a concern over the console GUI design--may have been a reference to a real estate issue on the PS2, not sure. But there was something brought up about issues with expanding macros for the PS2. Which, as we all know, they have traditionally been reluctant to make major changes to the interface that cannot also be done on the PS2, in the interest of keeping the player experience balanced.

What I understand from Hiromichi_Tanaka post that they added more space to the Macro title where one can input more characters same with the lines, I didn't get they could not add anymore lines to a macro, I'm not saying that's what you read, but I can see people getting confused after all the main reason to this thread as well of all those other threads out there is to wonder why we could not have more lines within a macro and there is pretty much no facts or much facts that can be fond.

But yeah I do agree there is a issue in coding though in some way. seeing there is a Max of 368 characters 8 in the Macro title and 60 in 6 lines, that being said what if lowering the number to 30 in 12 lines question is could that solve this issue or maybe Square Enix just doesn't want this headache.

[RAIST]

What I understand from Hiromichi_Tanaka post that they added more space to the Macro title where one can input more characters same with the lines, I didn't get they could not add anymore lines to a macro, I'm not saying that's what you read, but I can see people getting confused after all the main reason to this thread as well of all those other threads out there is to wonder why we could not have more lines within a macro and there is pretty much no facts or much facts that can be fond.

But yeah I do agree there is a issue in coding though in some way. seeing there is a Max of 368 characters 8 in the Macro title and 60 in 6 lines, that being said what if lowering the number to 30 in 12 lines question is could that solve this issue or maybe Square Enix just doesn't want this headache.

I don't know just how to explain it in a way you can understand it, but you can't just truncate the fields and then magically create more fields. It doesn't necessarily work that way. This is not a PC environment that is desinged with that flexibility in mind. It is a very restricted 32 MB memory space, that has not had any changes from Sony in ages.

In this particular instance, they likely could not display beyond the 8 characters on the name of the macro because those "objects" were defined a limit at the system level on how long they can be ages ago. To make them longer may require a deep retooling of the interface that simply may not a viable investment of resources for a game of this age. These fields are likely streamed as a fixed length field. If you put 1 character or 8 in there, it is probably still parsed in the format of an 8 character field. If the field were to overflow when parsed, it could get truncated to 8 characters when it is sent to the screen. By doing this, the same resources are used to display them whether it originated as 4 bytes, or 10...8 are read and sent to the screen each time. Simply going back and changing the length of the field we are allowed to put in there does not alter the resources reserved for displaying that item. A similar thing likely goes for each line in the macro. Probably a fixed length they are prepared to parse from each line, or it may be done as a single stream of text that is parsed out as a fixed-length per line, or some EOL character we don't see ourselve....who knows. That object is likely managed the same way whether it has all lines full or not. I doubt they recompile our macros every time we edit them--they are probably saved in a uniform format, so the system has a certain space and format reserved for that object so that it knows how to process them every time they are called and streamed. Think of the Windows Registry--how many values are saved as 0x00000001 to simply represent the state of on/off, True/False?

Adding additional objects in this already overtaxed memory space of the PS2 can involve a much deeper problem that can go all the way back to bootstrapping that has to be adddressed and balanced. To register placeholders to represent more lines, they need empty slots available for declaring those fields. If there are no slots available--than something has to be removed to make room. Which begs the question, what do you remove so you can inject more code?

This is something that is specific to the PS2 structure that SE is intent on using as the foundation for the core features of the interface. It's structures are more or less replicated to the other platforms, even though those platforms are technically capable of much more. The core design is sort of recycled and modded to run on these other systems. So long as SE is determined to keep all platforms in synch like this, if it is not worth investing in making the necessary changes for the PS2 console to support the changes then it likely won't be done.