General Vritual Machine architecture

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Revision as of 09:26, 15 July 2019 by Admin (talk | contribs)
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VM's general specifications
Type stack based
Integer registers 4 (I0 to I3)
Float registers 4 (F0 to F3)
Special registers 3 (X, Y, A)
Number of instructions 100
Maximum stack size unknown
Number of calls ~2000

Final Fantasy XII contains a stack based virtual machine that runs field and event scripts. The implementation seems to be exactly the same starting with Japanese PS2 release, through PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch versions. The only thing that changes are available calls. Each subsequent version supports all previous calls and includes a few dozen of new ones at most.


Even though the VM contains a set of registers, they are used either by compiler or have only quality of life purpose (so it is not needed to declare variables for iterators or temporary storage). All except a few instructions operate solely on stack.