Topics

1

General Discussion / Chrono projects C&D'd (including technical research)

« on: 2009-05-10 04:59:54 »

For the admins here, I'm wondering if you'd care to receive a bunch of Chrono Cross PSX notes?
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,7396.msg159819.html#msg159819

Square Enix is really on the warpath. Hopefully it only extends to Chrono projects, but I figured I'd give you guys a heads-up in case it proves useful.

2

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Let's talk about pointers in PSX Square games

« on: 2008-05-15 18:49:05 »

Much has been said about text pointers for translation hacking, but I've seen precious little about the pointers a game engine uses for other objects, such as character models and textures. I've been searching every nook and cranny of the Chrono Cross disc 1 game image for pointers to the battle and overworld character model data, but to no avail. I'm 99% confident that such pointers exist, because if I, say, overwrite a given character model with another model that has much more data and spills over the sector boundary at which the original model normally ends, the game freezes on me. A model swap iin which the new model is less than or equal to the file size of the original model works just fine, on the other hand.

The only place I can find pointers to the battle models is in the game image's Table of Contents, but it appears that the game engine does not "interact" with this giant pointer table in any meaningful way -- while it helps immensely in dumping all files from the CD, changing the Table of Contents to match file alterations does nothing to solve the problems associated with those alterations, and a major alteration to the Table of Contents absent any other changes to the game image causes no problems. If anyone's interested, there's some notes on Chrono Cross' Table of Contents here: http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,5181.0.html

Given the difficulty I've had in locating pointers to overworld and battle models, it is my great suspicion that those pointers may be embedded within the battle script and fieldscripts, which may in turn be LZSS compressed (hence my difficulty in finding the pointers straight-out). My question for the qhimm community is, has there been any investigation of the pointers to model data and other graphical objects in the Playstation versions of Xenogears, FF7, FF8 and FF9? I suppose FF9's pointer system would be most applicable to Chrono Cross given the overlapping development periods.

Also, is the expectation of finding pointers to various objects within uncompressed fieldscripts and battle scripts realistic? I figure if there's a command that says, "load model ()" it would make sense that an "oh, by the way, the models start here, here, here, and here..." list would directly follow. However, this is an aspect of game hacking to which I am completely new.

3

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Front Mission 2 (PSX) Character Portrait Compression

« on: 2008-02-25 19:42:20 »

I've got this over at Xentax too, but I figured I'd port it over here since it deals with how the PSX handles compressed data. Figuring this out will be a useful exercise for me, and PSX enthusiasts here may also be interested (or already know what's going on).

While the vast majority of Front Mission 2's graphics are uncompressed on the game CD, it appears that the character portraits are compressed in a manner functionally similar to RLE compression, i.e., runs of identical bytes or repeating byte patterns are collapsed into just a few. However, it doesn't seem to be simple RLE and I can't find any sort of identifying marker at the beginning of the compressed graphics data that would indicate what type of compression is being used. I'm interested in the opinions and observations of this forum's veteran game resource investigators.

The following pics are three comparisons between the compressed data on the game CD (top) and uncompressed form as it appears in VRAM (bottom). Green bytes in the upper section of the examples are the compressed form of their expanded counterparts in the lower section of each example. Red bytes are identical in both the data on the game CD and in VRAM, meaning they are not compressed on the game CD.




This comparison is particularly interesting. Notice the compressed code 41 E9 04 from the game CD. This corresponds to four E9 bytes of uncompressed data, as if the compressed code specified that there would be four E9 bytes in a row.


Ah, you can see another instance of what appears to be near-straight RLE compression here. There's a compressed run that reads 40 08 03 in the upper portion of this pic, and it corresponds to an expanded run of 08 08 08 in the lower portion.

Another thing I've noticed is that the first byte in many runs of compressed data may have something to do with the uncompressed length of that run. For example, if a compressed run begins with the byte 9D, the uncompressed run has 31 bytes. Here's a list of equivalencies that appear in these examples:

9A: uncompressed run has 28 bytes
9B: uncompressed run has 29 bytes
9C: uncompressed run has 30 bytes
9D: " " 31 bytes.
A0: " " 34 bytes.

But this pattern doesn't hold all the time. I observe one compressed run beginning with 82 that has an uncompressed length of 10 bytes, and a compressed run beginning with C2 that has an uncompressed length of 30 bytes. Is it possible that the compression scheme being used here involves a mixture of compression techniques?

4

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / FF8 Field Model v. Battle Model Textures -- Quick and Painless Questions

« on: 2007-11-08 16:57:13 »

I imagine someone can answer this one VERY quickly. Having ripped some TIMs from FF8, I believe the field models are lower resolution and thus use less-detailed textures than the battle models (at least for the main characters). Taking Zell as an example:





Can someone confirm my suspicion that the top texture is for Zell's (regular clothing) field model, and the bottom set is for his battle model?

And another question for people familiar with FF8 models -- do monsters have their own separate battle and field models like the main characters do? In Chrono Cross at least, it seems enemies use the very same textures for both "overworld encounter models" and in-battle models. FF8 has invisible random encounters on the overworld of course, but some bosses do appear on the overworld just before Squall & Co. do battle with them, IIRC.

EDIT: By the way, holy sheet! -- has anyone seen this before?  http://kvaks.narod.ru/FF8Info.html
Did someone here write that program? I'm trying it out soon.

Looks like the rars are corrupt? Some of the links are broken too. Hopefully everything will be re-upped there. It seems to use .DAT files as input - does that mean it works only for the PC version of FF8, or are there .DAT files on the PlayStation CD as well?

5

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / FF9 Models: How did Zande go about viewing them?

« on: 2007-11-07 17:49:41 »

Sorry to spam the Tech Forum, but this doesn't involve Chrono Cross specifically, so I thought a new topic was warranted.

Searching the Qhimm boards, I've realized that Zande managed to actually view some of Final Fantasy IX's models. I couldn't find any info on exactly *how* Zande went about this, however. Anyone know if Zande actually decoded the model format and wrote a viewer specifically for FF9, or wrote a plugin for another model viewer such as 3DS Max?

6

Archive / Compiling FF9 Viewer from source code - FF9Viewer.pch missing?

« on: 2007-11-06 15:16:23 »

Hey all. I'd like to use Qhimm's FF9Viewer to pull some model data from the game if possible. Qhimm stated in a previous post that he used Microsoft Visual C++ to develop the utility and he posted source code back in 2002 I believe.

I'm attempting to compile in Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, and it's telling me that I need a precompiled header called FF9Viewer.pch, which appears to be missing. Qhimm or anyone else who's successfully compiled the program, any tips for a noob?

The source code Qhimm posted is below. Thanks to Vehek for pointing it out to me.
http://www.qhimm.com/ff9viewer_src.zip