Messages

2851

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-18 17:42:37 »

I noticed a weird thing in Wall Market. In my game, Braver and Big Shot randomly damaged my own characters...
I had no clue what caused this, until I decided to uncheck the Random box, in "Limit"'s command target window (in WM "command" tab). The result ? Braver hit all enemies.
Noticing these boxes didn't behave like I thought they would, I remembered that I unchecked the "Short Range" box... ...and as I thought, that's what was making my limit skills hurt my team.

Just to let you know

WM is assigning all the targeting data for commands correctly so I'm not going to even begin to speculate why it's doing that. Kinda fun though.

Progress on the Battle & Growth data is going well. It's really not as hard as I had initially feared. Although I think there should be a disclaimer saying that editing that is advanced stuff and should be treated with caution.

2852

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-18 06:13:20 »

Automatic list production.  Nifty!  I never thought of that.

Character AI, I just want to disable (including Vince's Limits).  Do I just change every AI value to ff or something?  I've never attempted AI editing before.  It seems all so complicated.

The data is saved in kernel piece 2 (KERNEL.BIN2 using WM) so you can create the pieces and load from them then save that data. Even though WM doesn't edit that info, it still reads it when it loads. It's like it's begging to be edited :O. Anyway, you'll just need to blank out (make the data FFh) with a hex editor and create the KERNEL.BIN from that.
Well, you obviously don't want to blank out EVERYTHING in that piece or you'll get all screwed up. All you'd need to do is blank out four bytes. 0x062A & 0x062B for Vincent and 0x0630 & 0x631 for Sephiroth. Instead of erasing the script, that unlinks the scripts to the characters and the game just ignores them. This SHOULD make the game think they're normal characters. Vincent's characters just have a main script while Sephiroth has Pre-battle and main scripts. However, Vincent's limit forms become uncontrollable if these scripts are disabled. The game is hardwired into looking for specific scripts when the Vincent's turn comes around. If it doesn't find them then his turn is ignored and the timer is reset to 0 and starts over. I don't know if Sephiroth is handled this way or not.

2853

Archive / Re: FF7 movie mechanics

« on: 2008-12-18 03:03:32 »

One thing I forgot th mention. The movies will have to be encoded with the TruMotion2 codec for the PC movies. You can find that on the ff7 tools page on the wiki.

2854

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-18 02:55:53 »

What I CAN do is make a data sheet of different attacks' IDs.

I've just done this. There are just under 1000 unique attacks in this game. I now have a text file and csv file with a list of their names and the scenes that contain them.

You... are... amazing.  How do you do these things so quickly?  Are you sleep-depriving yourself or something? (please tell me you're not)

Character IA is in the kernel, isn't it?  It's used for Vincent's Limit Breaks and for Sephiroth.  Will this ever be changable?  And if it's not, do you know where it is stored?  I just wanna see what happens when you make Galian Beast, Hellmasker, etc. controllable, that's all.  As for making Seph controllable, I think I found a certain topic on that a while back.  I'll have to go looking for it.

No. I'm not sleep deprived at all. I don't have a very demanding job at the moment so I work on my own projects while I have down time. I slightly modified Heidegger to produce that entire list for me so it's not like I went through all 256 scenes and wrote down the unique attacks

Yes, Character AI is in the kernel and WILL eventually (key word there) be editable. The easiest way to make Sephiroth controllable is to disable his script. That's easy. Changing the script, that's harder. I don't know how much control I'll give to this.

2855

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-17 21:36:26 »

Just one little thing, when you have the time, NFITC1 :
Heidegger is listing the scene files in hexadecimal, while most other tools and documents list them in decimal values... Could you change them to decimal, too ? It would allow one to use gjoerulv's enemy list more easily, for instance.

NO! I HATE YOU PEOPLE AND YOUR DEMANDS. ....wait. Oops, wrong board. teehee Yeah.... Just updated it.
Really I've been meaning to update the Attack ID listed above the Attack names. Now it shows the actual game ID rather than the index in which appears in the file. It goes to 65535 on blank ones because their index is NULL (FFFFh).

2856

Archive / Re: Are there any Monster atk Editors?

« on: 2008-12-17 20:39:34 »

How do you setup enemy encounters in summon materias(you know, like a guard or something)?

I don't understand this question. Please rephrase/clarify.

2857

Archive / Re: FF7 movie mechanics

« on: 2008-12-17 20:38:43 »

Either Akari's purposefully being unhelpful, or I'm misunderstanding what the questions mean.

Translation:
1. How the game knows when to end the .avi and [resume gameplay]
2. What about [playing consecutive] .avi files, does it count frames for each file or for all of them together?
3. Is there [an application that can] count the frames [of an avi file], or do whatever it is the game does, to compare the old file with the new one so that i can make them the same?

Answers:
1. The game compares the frame count of the AVI to the frame it is displaying. Somewhere in the AVI is a number that has the total number of frames in it. When it is finished displaying the last frame, the gameplay resumes.
2. Same deal here. As long as the game is told to play one AVI then the next, it won't resume gameplay until they are both played.
3. Length isn't an issue. If you want to know, a program called GSpot can quickly identify several things about most AVIs, including frame count

If you want to make/replace a movie you'll have to update moviecam.lgp and the associated cam file. Don't ask me how to do that. I have no idea.

2858

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-17 20:00:39 »

WM will only ever be a kernel editor.

So I created 1.1.7 that no longer creates the kernel pieces on its own. Rather, it will detect their presence and offer the option to open the pieces or not. It will also create them only when the user chooses to (via a new menu option) and delete them as well. This should fix about 90% of the file-related errors that people get since it will only ever read one file unless you tell it otherwise. Down side of this is it will require more memory. Peaked at just over 24MB (*cough**cough*thankyouverymuchWindows*cough* ) where previously it was peaking out at just under 22MB I think. Let me update the help file a little and I'll throw it on filefront.

2859

Archive / Re: Are there any Monster atk Editors?

« on: 2008-12-17 18:12:21 »

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=7928.0

Bottom of the first post. It's called "Heidegger"

PS - keep a backup of your scene.bin file in case something bad happens while editing (It's still a WIP after all).

2860

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-17 16:15:05 »

Btw the guy is trying to bring up the fact that ff7 and 10 are connected. interesting, took me a few days but i played all the games involved and watched advent children and i see the connection. after finishing WM Take a look. then play 7, watch advent children, play dirge of cerberus and then play 10 and 10-2. after that think about it and you will see it massive cleary, the writer of ff7 and x10 is trying to make a point about the real world. funny really.

#1. Don't double post. The "modify" button is there for a reason.

#2. I know what that website is trying to say, but I don't know what the ""key item" found by wallmarket. "Memories of yuna"" is that NeoCloudstrife is talking about.

#3. I think I'll add a "save/load pieces" option to the file menu. I don't know why your pc is crashing, but in the interest of accuracy and complete compatibility WM should not exclusively load from them.

2861

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-17 13:57:03 »

A command-level decision must be reached so I'm putting it to my faithful users. Should WM make the KERNEL.BINXX files anymore? They're not needed because I found out that I can create dynamic arrays (how 'bout that?) that I can store the de/compressed info in. This would be several disk-writes shorter (and possibly make writing the kernel virtually instantaneous if the text isn't being updated). This is currently what Heidegger is doing. It reads the scene.bin and stores all 256 compressed scenes and decompresses them when needed. When a scene is selected it is decompressed into a scene file array. Since they're all 7808 bytes this part was easy. When the "Somethingchanged" check is on (though admittedly it's supposed to be invisible. sorry ) and the scene changes, Heidegger re-compresses the scene that's currently loaded and puts it back in its place before loading the next scene.
So let me give you a little history lesson about WM (for those who don't know or are getting in on the ground floor on how it works). Early on in the development (before 0.9.0 was released) WM couldn't decompress or compress the KERNEL.BIN. So it relied on FF7dec to split the KERNEL.BIN into the 27 pieces so it could load each of those and draw info from. Then I decided that I could do that myself to remove a step that people shouldn't have to take. Since it was already written to use those files I just created files with the same names. This was also for the compressing. WM had to rely on GZip to compress the files (until version 1.1.5 when I learned to do it myself) then WM would read the .gz files and squish them all together in the KERNEL.BIN. This is no longer needed since all GZipping happens internally.
It is still reading from these files and writing to them. This is mostly because some things still aren't being edited (such as the KERNEL.BIN2), but now that even raw data can be edited, there's NO byte in any kernel file other than in KERNEL.BIN1 (some of these WILL NOT be touched because it would be pointless to do so) and KERNEL.BIN2 (feature coming soon) that cannot be edited. Text is also being created dynamically and appropriately. At the moment, KERNEL.BIN2 can be Hex Edited and then WM will read whatever is inside it and put it in the KERNEL.BIN since WM doesn't edit it. Once it does, however, would there really be any need to create these files? I think not or else you'd run into the problem that someone ran into where the data wouldn't match what was in the kernel if it was edited by another application.


PS:

NFITC1, with your help, i can now conclude that the website i stumbled across years ago was right:
http://www.willamette.edu/~ejohnson/findex.htm

take a look at the ideas conveyed there, then take a look at the latest secret "key item" found by wallmarket. "Memories of yuna"... suspicious?

I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't see a key item called "Memories of yuna" or anything similar. What information on that website are you getting these ideas from?


EDIT:

What I CAN do is make a data sheet of different attacks' IDs.

I've just done this. There are just under 1000 unique attacks in this game. I now have a text file and csv file with a list of their names and the scenes that contain them.

2862

Archive / Re: new chocobo

« on: 2008-12-17 13:09:51 »

Wow! Red XIII as a Zombie Dragon...I don't know if I'd recruit him as a party member or not... I love the rest of it though. It's all awesome!

2863

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-17 12:12:28 »

lol!  That's one random attack name!

One question: I know that you can edit attacks with WM and expect the enemies that use those attacks to have the changes you made.  For instance, if you turned Fire2 into Ultima, then every enemy that has Fire2 will use Ultima instead.  As a result, if you edit attacks that are in the kernel using Heidegger, the changes you made will not register unless the kernel is updated, right?  Is there a way that you could use Heidegger to change an enemy's attack such as Fire to one that's not in the kernel, such as Pale Horse?

This is correct, but the answer to the second question is no (I originally believed it was yes, now I know differently). The reason is that all the attacks are indexed. On the wiki there's a space in the scenes labeled as Attack IDs starting at address 0x0840. I originally thought this to be specific to the monster, but now it seems it's universal like I had pre-originally thought (it's a long story, don't worry about it). The only way to change a monster's attacks would be to change THAT number and the corresponding attack equivalent in their script. Not a simple task, but not impossible either. I MAY add a feature to Heidegger that will allow reassigning of attack IDs, but don't get your hopes up, that's a VERY ambitious action. What I CAN do is make a data sheet of different attacks' IDs. The data will still have to be changed in the scene files, however.
Basically, if you want to give another monster Pale Horse you'd have to put Pale Horse's data in that monster's scene file(s) and give it a reference in its own script to perform that action. So it is possible, but not with Heidegger (which I've only been working on for a day anyway) at the moment.

2864

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-16 21:07:47 »

That's quite an odd name for an attack . Was that random silliness or is there a 4chan meme that I am missing out on?

Just something random from H*R. Mostly just to see how long the names could be.

2865

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-16 20:49:58 »

Well, it's an attack editor; how about giving it a name like Scarlet or Heidegger?

You mean like this?

Something that does this or this? That's on the first post already.

2866

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-16 18:30:29 »

Question. Can the kernel(s) determine how many people are in and who is in the party at particular points in the game, and also what stats they have at random intervals. so say for instance i was recreating a different game based on the FF7 engine. Would editing the Kernel allow me add characters when you meet them, give them X stats, remove them when they are removed from the party and make them return freely, and with different stats, just like Aeris and sephiroth are? I'm simply curious to see how this is done, if it anything to do with the kernel, and if so, would WM be able to do this in the future? something tells me the code in the scene files denotes this, however...

*whistle* That's a complicated question. The short answer is no. The kernel has data for Sephiroth and Young Cloud for the Kalm flashback, then that data gets forcibly overwritten by Vincent's and Cait Sith's data by the active script at some point after the flashback is over, possibly as late as the moment they "join the party". The kernel does not contain these characters' stats and, regrettably, can't be affected by WM. Aeris's data never actually leaves the memory. Only the flag allowing you to switch to her is turned off. Same thing can be said about assigning stats. I don't think the game ever assigns this (indeed, there may not even be a function to do so). Rather, it will calculate stats based on average party level at the time the character is first recruited. They start out at level 1. Then they are given experience until their level is within a certain level of the average level of your active members (which is counted in halves in kernel.bin2). Their levels and stats are then increased accordingly.
It is most unfortunate as Vincent's and Cait Sith's initial data are not in the kernel. I don't even know where they are, but they're probably hard-coded into the main executable script.

2867

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-16 15:28:00 »

i think the unknown value in the initial tab in WM might be GP. not sure though.

I am 100% certain that it is not. That Unknown is PER character. It's something to do with that character, but it's always 0 when the game is saved. It comes in the middle of all the HP/MP data so it might have something to do with that or possibly other stat modifing, but I'm not really sure it would do anything.

2868

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-15 23:47:12 »

I am getting this error with the newest version- mscorwks.dll cannot be loaded.

You probably need the latest .NET Framework runtime files. They're available on Microsoft's website.

2869

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-15 21:29:59 »

the window.bin file in the kernal folder. and in the initial stat editorpart of wall market if you set current exp. to the max and save it, when you reopen it it has an error so i went to char edit the save editer i seen what they had as max and its a 40000 difference.

Ah. I see what you mean. At least for the error in WM. I don't know what's going on with whatever save editor you're using, but with WM that's a potential problem... Needs to be fixed quickly.
. . . .
Fixed.

2870

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-15 21:04:42 »

@NTIFC1

That was quick! Are you a robot?

Sadly, no.   (you spelled my name wrong. Prepare to Die! ......or not)

But there are a couple of things...

An unhandled exception occurs when I open my modded scene.bin; the program seems to work, but doesn't open any of the scenes from EA onwards. It doesn't happen when I open my unmodded backup, so it may be a problem at my end; I'm going to do a bit more experimenting.

Well, that's a barebones thing anyway. It will work fine with an unmodded one and I thought it would work fine with a modded one too, but I guess not. I never said that was a full release anyway. It's a Beta of a Demo of a Demo.

And wallmarket doesn't recognise changes to the names of spells, weapons etc. that were made to kernel2.bin after I first used version 1.0; interestingly, it does recognise changes made with Teioh before that. The changes do show up in the game.

Were you in PC mode? Did you build kernel2.bin after you were done editing the text?
SOLUTION: I know what it is. If kernel2.bin9, kernel2.bin10, etc. still exist then that's what WM's going to read. Open it, then select "Reload" from the File menu.

lol i figured it out, i deleted the window file in the kernal. oops. i fixed it. but the initial datta has an error though. the max ex gained is actually 40000 off. it messes with the kernal to where you cant reopen it.

I have no idea what you mean. What "window file in the kernal[sic]" and what is "max ex gained"?

2871

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-15 19:12:11 »

Well, it's an attack editor; how about giving it a name like Scarlet or Heidegger?

You mean like this?

2872

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-15 16:20:43 »

Just downloaded it; the formerly messed up materia slots on the initial data/character data screen look right now. So, how's the enemy attack editor going, and what exactly will it do?

How's it coming? I haven't even started yet. It'll happen soon. Maybe the initial one by the end of the week. It'll contain a lot of what I like to call Copy Pasta.
It'll look exactly like the Attack Tab does right now except it to the left will be the enemy names and there will be a drop-down or SECOND list with attack names. Rebuilding the Scene.bin file is a little harder than the KERNEL.BIN because every block has to be 8K in size and it's all very strictly enforced. Not a big problem, just annoying. And I don't really like the name "Hojo-Market". I feel like I'm stealing all of Squall78's thunder with that. I'm sure I'll get over it.

2873

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-15 15:39:48 »

when i edit the initial data with this program, the text is all messed up, all the text is on top of each other. how would i fix this?

If you're talking about the text in WM then your display DPI is too low. It should be 96 or higher.

2874

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-15 00:34:56 »

I've noticed that the materia display on the Initial Data/Character Data screen is a little bit messed up, but it's only cosmetic.

In other news, I've used WallMarket to make some new materia and spells!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CMuGaWnl0ks

What about the Character data is messed up? Is it the materias and the links? If that's the case I'm gonna have to say live with it because there's little/nothing I can do about it.

OK, I'm not too big to admit this. I'm a jerk. I fixed this (I think). The next version will not have that issue.


UPDATE: Now that the GZipping is working the way I want, I can begin to make an enemy attack editor that will act as a suppliment to Hojo (Since Armorvil, and I'm sure others, would like this to be so). My biggest concern was always the unpacking/repacking and the various things that could go wrong in-between. Since Hojo already does practically everything else with monster data and SceneEdit can screw with scripts, I'll just stick to editing the attacks and call it something goofy like "Hojo-Market". Making this will be a breeze compared to the nearly constant headaches and teethgrindings WM has caused me (since it'll be a watered down version of WM anyway)

PS: Armorvil reports that the minuscule-ly smaller KERNEL.BIN works in the PSX! Expect version 1.1.5 to be released later today after I remove some now-unneeded code. The only way to make this better would be to integrate the help file into the executable and hand-write the code that does the actual compressions. I honestly don't care to do that at this point. It will run no faster to do that. The point is that WM is no longer executing 27 shell commands per kernel creation which saves on time of creation, CPU ticks, and HD writes. That's what I've wanted all along. The next version update will include battle and growth data, but there's a bit to do in preparation of that so that may take some time. Be patient. It'll come.

2875

FF7 Tools / Wall Market, FFVII KERNEL.BIN editor

« on: 2008-12-14 00:18:14 »

What about the Character data is messed up? Is it the materias and the links? If that's the case I'm gonna have to say live with it because there's little/nothing I can do about it.

Yes, the coloured orbs do not line up completely with the slots and I can't see the links, but it's not a big problem.

That's what I figured. It looks fine on 96 DPI, but higher than that makes the links small and lower will make the links too big. Really, you just need to see if there's a link there at all. The background image (the links) don't stretch like the foreground image does. At least I don't think it does. I'll try that out later.

The music's appropriate if the viewer knows why you chose that. You should mention it in your description.

Oh yes. I managed to create a 100% accurate GZip file!! I was applying the CRC creation to the encrypted data when it should be applied to the raw data. That was a little embarrassing.    Well, all that's left now (at least with THAT feature) is to write the code that will create the GZip data. I don't even have to write them to the disk now. How 'bout that?

UPDATE: I need someone to test this on the PSX game. While I can create several identical gzip files, I was only testing a few. When I made it again, the accessory file was different from the others. I'm not really sure why, nor do I really care since all the others are identical. Nice thing is, it's now 1 byte smaller and works just fine on the PC version.