Author: JeMaCheHi, HobbitDur, Nihil

Scene.out contains all the data for each encounter in the game, this includes enemy IDs, positions, flags and more.

See the corresponding thread: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15816.0

Runtime loading and field/world-map handoff are documented in Encounter Trigger Runtime and Battle Runtime.

File Structure

Scene.out contains no header. It is a raw list of 1024 encounters. Each encounter block consists of 128 bytes and has the following structure:

Offset	Length	Description
0x00	1	Battle Stage ID (See .x files)
0x01	1	Battle Flags
0x02	1	Main camera data
0x03	1	Secondary camera data
0x04	1	“NOT Visible” enemy flags
0x05	1	“Not Loaded” enemy flags
0x06	1	“NOT Targetable” enemy flags
0x07	1	“Enabled” enemy flags
0x08	48	Enemy Coordinates
0x38	8	Enemy IDs
0x40	16	Unused 1
0x50	16	Unused 2
0x60	16	Unused 3
0x70	8	Unused 4
0x78	8	Enemy Levels

Battle Flags

Similarly to enemy flags, it’s a byte and each bit determines whether a specific flag is on or off.

Flag value	Name	Description
0x01	Disable Escape	Prevents escaping, AI opcode re-enable escaping
0x02	Disable Victory Fanfare	Disables the fanfare
0x04	Show Timer	Shows active timer
0x08	Disable EXP Gain	Prevents EXP from being gained
0x10	Disable Post-Battle Screen	Doesn’t show the post-battle screens (return to field instead)
0x20	Surprise Attack	Monster’s ATBs start full
0x40	Back Attack	Monster’s ATBs start full + all party members afflicted with Back Attack
0x80	Force Standard Battle	Normal ATB starting positions for everyone, no Back Attack status applications

Camera Data

This byte selects the battle-intro camera animation: the camera sweep played when the battle starts, before ATB time starts. It is an index into the camera animation collection stored in the loaded battle stage’s .x file, so the meaning of a given value depends entirely on which stage the encounter uses.

Bits	Description
7-4 (Upper nibble)	Camera animation set index (into the stage’s camera animation collection)
3	Unused (masked off by the engine)
2-0	Camera animation index within the set (0-7)

Each stage’s camera animation collection declares its own number of sets (NumOfSets, first uint16 of the collection), and each set holds 8 animation pointers. If the set index is out of range for the stage (set >= NumOfSets), the engine silently does nothing: no intro animation plays and the camera stays at its default position. Values are therefore stage-dependent; for example a0stg000.x (Balamb Garden Quad) has 2 sets, so only 0x00-0x07 and 0x10-0x17 select an animation.

Main vs Secondary camera

Every encounter holds two of these bytes; we’ll call the first one (offset 0x02) Main Camera and the second one (offset 0x03) Secondary Camera.

At battle load, BS_CameraInit picks one of the two with a fair 50/50 coin flip (pnrg_lcg_algo() & 1 — the LCG bit used is well mixed, so there is no bias toward the main camera; earlier observations of ~80% main were sample bias).

There is exactly one hardcoded exception: encounter ID 33 (2× G-Soldier, Dollet elevator) always uses the Main Camera, presumably to keep that scripted Dollet sequence consistent.

Runtime pipeline (PC 2000, FF8_EN.exe)

1. FFBattleDirector_battleLoop loads the 128-byte encounter record into CURRENT_ENCOUNTER_DATA_SCENE_OUT via ReadSceneOutFileForSpecificEncounter.
2. During stage init, the per-stage handler (BS_StageXXX) receives the load camera command and calls BS_CameraInit, which picks main/secondary as described above and stores the byte into camera-VM variable 0 (CURRENT_CAMERA_ANIMATION). It then resolves the stage .x camera section pointers (camera settings + animation collection) via BS_GetCameraHeaderPointers (renamed from BS_GetCameraAnimPointers).
3. Every frame, updateBattleCamera → BS_UpdateCameraSequence executes the stage’s camera settings byte-code with the shared animation-sequence VM (computeAnimationSequence — the same VM used by monster animation sequences and camera sequences). Stage camera scripts start with camera opcode 05 00 = “play the camera animation whose ID is read from camera variable 0” — i.e. the scene.out byte.
4. BS_GetCameraAnimationPointer decodes the byte: set = (id >> 4) & 0xF (bounds-checked against NumOfSets), anim = id & 7, resolves the animation’s relative pointer inside the stage file and spawns the ProcessCameraAnimation task that plays it.

After the intro animation ends, this byte has no further effect: mid-battle cameras are chosen per action by cameraWhenDoingAction, which overwrites camera variable 0 with its own animation choices.

See Function addresses for the raw exe addresses.

Enemy Coordinates

Each encounter stores 8 enemy coordinate blocks, one for each monster slot.
Each block is 6 bytes, containing 3 signed 16-bit values that represent the X, Y, Y positions.

Offset	Size	Description
Slot ID * 6 + 0	2	X Position
Slot ID * 6 + 2	2	Y Position
Slot ID * 6 + 4	2	Z Position

Enemy Flags

Enemy flags are one byte each, and each bit determines whether a specific monster’s flag is on or off, starting from the leftmost bit (MSB) for Monster 1, down to the rightmost bit (LSB) for Monster 8.

Flag value	Monster
0x80	Monster 1
0x40	Monster 2
0x20	Monster 3
0x10	Monster 4
0x08	Monster 5
0x04	Monster 6
0x02	Monster 7
0x01	Monster 8

NOT Visible stops the monster from rendering.
NOT Targetable removes the monster from the list of targetable enemies.
NOT Loaded means the monster’s AI isn’t being evaluated.
Enabled needs to be true for the monster to exist in the fight, even if it’s not tagged as NOT Visible or NOT Loaded, it won’t appear or do anything until it’s Enabled.

Enemy IDs

Encounters hold 8 monster IDs.
IDs are the last 3 digits of the monster’s c0mxxx.dat file) + 0x10.

Offset	Size	Monster
0x00	1	Monster 1 ID
0x01	1	Monster 2 ID
0x02	1	Monster 3 ID
0x03	1	Monster 4 ID
0x04	1	Monster 5 ID
0x05	1	Monster 6 ID
0x06	1	Monster 7 ID
0x07	1	Monster 8 ID

Unused

Unused 1, 2, and 3 each contain 2 bytes per monster, making them 16 bytes long (8 monsters * 2 bytes).
Unused 4 contains 1 byte per monster, for a total of 8 bytes.

The data is laid out sequentially, from Monster 1 through Monster 8, and each monster has its own set of values, though some values are shared between monsters.

Confirmed unused (PC 2000, FF8_EN.exe): disassembly analysis shows that no code ever reads offsets 0x40-0x77 of the encounter record:

• The loaded record lives at CURRENT_ENCOUNTER_DATA_SCENE_OUT and is the game’s only live copy (ReadSceneOutFileForSpecificEncounter is its only writer, and its staging buffer is not read anywhere else).
• Every other field of the record has cross-references (camera bytes → BS_CameraInit, enemy flags/IDs → setEnemyVisibility / setAllMonsterInfoFromDatSection / linkedToMonsterVisibility, coordinates → getZCoordinateEnemyBattleTask67, levels → setAllMonsterInfoFromDatSection), but the four unused blocks at +0x40, +0x50, +0x60, +0x70 have zero cross-references, and all neighbouring array accesses are bounded to the 8 monster slots.

They are therefore remnants of a scrapped feature (their 2/2/2/1 bytes-per-monster layout suggests planned per-monster attributes that were never hooked up), and can be repurposed freely by mods targeting the PC version. (This has only been verified against the PC executable; the PSX build has not been checked.)

Enemy Level

Enemy levels are represented by 1 byte.

Offset	Size	Level
0x00	1	Monster 1 LVL
0x01	1	Monster 2 LVL
0x02	1	Monster 3 LVL
0x03	1	Monster 4 LVL
0x04	1	Monster 5 LVL
0x05	1	Monster 6 LVL
0x06	1	Monster 7 LVL
0x07	1	Monster 8 LVL

By default, the enemy level is determined by the average level of the current team team level, and the game adds or substracts team level / 5.

• Numbers from 0 to 100 are fixed levels N +- (N / 5).
• From 101 to 200 are max levels fixed min(team level +- (team level / 5), N)
• From 201 to 250 are added values team level + (N - 200) +- ((team level + (N - 200)) / 5)
• 251 is level between 1 to 65, but the game exceptionnaly doesn’t divide the result by +-5, it adds or substracts a random value between 0 and 3 min(team level +- rand(0, 3), 65)
• 252 is completely random rand(1, 100)
• 253 is not used in the game, but the formula is random with a constraint rand(1, team level +- (team level / 5))
• 254 is the average team level, period, no division per 5 team level
• 255 is the standard formula team level +- (team level / 5)

Notes

No more than 4 enemies can be Enabled at any given time.
Using a value lower than 0x10 for an enemy ID will crash the game on battle start, as the first 16 IDs are reserved for playable characters.

Function addresses

Function	Address	Description
BS_CameraInit	0x500F70	Picks main/secondary camera via a coin flip (verified IDA function)
FFBattleDirector_battleLoop	0x47CCB0	Battle state machine (verified IDA function)
CURRENT_ENCOUNTER_DATA_SCENE_OUT	0x1D287DC	Global variable/data, not a function
ReadSceneOutFileForSpecificEncounter	0x48D0E0	Loads the 128-byte scene.out record (verified IDA function)
CURRENT_CAMERA_ANIMATION	0x1D97728	Global variable/data, not a function (camera-VM variable 0)
BS_GetCameraHeaderPointers (formerly documented as BS_GetCameraAnimPointers)	0x509970	Resolves the stage .x camera section pointers (verified IDA function)
updateBattleCamera	0x504060	Per-frame camera driver (verified IDA function)
BS_UpdateCameraSequence	0x509610	Executes the camera settings byte-code (verified IDA function)
computeAnimationSequence	0x50DB40	Shared animation-sequence VM (verified IDA function)
BS_GetCameraAnimationPointer	0x503520	Decodes the camera byte into an animation pointer (verified IDA function)
cameraWhenDoingAction	0x506190	Mid-battle per-action camera selection (verified IDA function)