A mechanics-overhaul ROM hack of Final Fantasy VI (SNES, US "FF3" ROM): FF6's cast, story, and world played through Octopath Traveler's combat grammar — sharp per-character job identities, shield/break tactics, and a boost-point turn economy.
v0.2 released (tag) — playable from the start through Vargas at the top of Mt. Kolts, roughly an hour and a quarter. Break and boost are both live: enemies carry shields and hidden weaknesses, hitting a weakness chips a shield, and breaking drops defenses hard. Boost banks turns and folds spell tiers (Fire → Fira → Firaga). The Narshe school teaches all of it, and Edgar's Bio Blaster makes poison a real key.
Work in progress toward the next rung, the scenario split through Kefka at Narshe. See docs/ROADMAP.md for milestones and the "playable frontier" metric, and docs/DESIGN.md for the mechanics design.
You supply your own ROM; it is not included. The build verifies it by SHA-1 and refuses anything else:
Final Fantasy III (USA).sfc sha1 4f37e4274ac3b2ea1bedb08aa149d8fc5bb676e7
Drop that file at the repo root, then:
make rom # build build/ot6.sfc
make test # full headless correctness gate (28 tests + pixel goldens)
make frontier-test # the same gate plus its frontier-gated tests (slow: mints the story chain)
make run # launch the built ROM in Mesen (GUI)
make patch # emit a distributable .bpsmake test runs the whole suite headlessly under Mesen's testrunner — no
window, no clicking. It takes a few minutes. See
tools/tests/README.md for how the harness works and
how to write a test.
ff6/ # full-game source (vendored everything8215/ff6 disassembly,
# GPL-3.0) + OT6 code in ff6/src/battle/ot6.asm (bank F0)
docs/ # design, roadmap, research notes, vendored-history patches
tools/ # Mesen 2, flips, Lua battle-test harness (tools/tests/)
build/ # built ROM + distributable .bps patch (git-ignored)
Nearly all OT6 code lives in expanded bank $F0; vanilla banks carry only
minimal jsl hook shims. docs/TOOLING.md covers the
toolchain and docs/research/ holds the reverse-engineering
notes.
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Issues are tracked here — including known defects with reproductions, which are a reasonable place to start.