Topics

1

General Discussion / Where is all the data for the PS1 version of FF7 located?

« on: 2021-05-20 16:47:38 »

I want to make some things like this but for FF7 when I'm done with the Ogre series.

I'm also curious if anyone has made any hacks that de-hardcode things, or expands tables, which can integrated with them, as well as the locations of names for digits (items, skills, materia) if it's uncompressed and can be easily integrated into the vlookup functions that generate previews.

I need explanations of each byte/bit too, or someone I can pester about the subject.

I don't care about animations or models, just data for things like skills, items, materia, enemies, encounter tables, and so on.

2

Completely Unrelated / Can we get a sticky in the FAQs/Tutorials board for board specific tags?

« on: 2021-05-20 16:41:36 »

Would be handy to know what to look for when searching, and how best to format a post so people can find it in the future.

3

General Discussion / Anti-Powergaming Mod Ideas?

« on: 2021-04-12 12:24:46 »

I'm slightly obsessive-compulsive, and I find that the drive to powergame is insatiable. With this in mind, how could one mod FF 7, 8, and 9 to remove the incentives to powergame? My thoughts on each are below.

Obviously these games have a lot of other problems that need fixing, but these are just the ones relevant to powergaming.


FF7

Problems:
1. Need to grind for sources in the Sunken Gelinka.
2. Need to grind for Vincent's kills.
3. Need to grind AP for Barret's ultimate weapon.

Solutions:
1A. Remove stat boost items from non-super-boss item drops, and provide a lot as a reward for their completion.
1B. Add stat boost items as rewards for stuff that's actually fun, like snowboarding.

2A. Reduce Vincent's kill counter to a single 8-bit byte.
2B. Give Vincent's ultimate weapon some other method to power up.

3A. Put a limit on how much you can power up Barret's ultimate weapon with materia AP.
3B. Change how it powers up.


FF8

Problems:
1. Need to LLG and use Card to help max stats while gaining levels.
2. Need to grind for gil or devour to max stats.
3. Can't get some stuff (Odin, Tonberry) until late in game to complete point 1.

Solutions:
1. Remove stat growth gf skills.
2. Put stat boost items needed to max everyone's stats behind incrementally tougher superbosses, and provide devour as a reward for defeating one of the first superbosses for those with less skill. And by that I mean you get 100 of all of them for defeating one superboss.
3. Point number 1 fixes this, but making Zantetsuken percentage based damage instead of instant death is a good half-measure.


FF9

Problems:
1. Need to run a LLG to optimize stats.
2. Need to somehow get under the time limit for Excalibur 2.
3. Can't miss anything.

Solutions:
1A. Slightly rework gear so you have several options at each upgrade checkpoint, which provide varying stat boosts. The sum of stat boosts should all be equal, and they should not change as you upgrade. We don't need to worry about enemies using gear, so you could make something like FFT or FF12 for armor, and let anyone equip anything (though that doesn't mean they'll be optimal IRT skills. Stat boosts to each would be (in the meta sense) alloted to each armor class in a point-buy system.

Mage armors: more Str, some Spr and Spd, least Mag
Warrior armors: same as mage, but switch Str and Mag
Utility armors: generally balanced.

1B. Remove gear stat boosts entirely and use only character levels to determine stats.

2A. Use something other than time to get Excalibur 2. I'm fond of superbosses.

2B. Do something entirely different with Steiner's weapons so you don't need a super weapon.

3. Ensure that nothing is permanently missible, but erect barriers to this. These can be theft/rewards from tough enemies, exorbitant gil costs for those who can't jump rope, puzzles, and challenging side quests.


All

Problems:
1. Powergaming isn't actually that useful.
2. Powergaming is boring and repetitive.

Solutions:
1. Make maximal powergaming something that is actually useful rather than pathological, by increasing the difficulty and adding unlocks which boost the final bosses powers after you beat optional superbosses, like in Star Ocean 2.
2. Create optional non-missible content periodically that challenges the player proportional to it's rewards.

4

General Discussion / Modifying the submarine underworld for greater overworld access?

« on: 2020-07-22 02:37:16 »

Has anyone done any research into this? Seems like it would be cool.

Ditto for shallow water and river fords for the "boat" and buggy.

5

General Discussion / There's a FF7 Disassembly?

« on: 2020-05-05 04:58:39 »

While gawping at a thread where a certain user who shall remain unnamed did as such , I noticed that quantumpencil mentioned that there's a disassembly of the game.

quantumpencil said...

My dissassembly of the game is open source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm705Itp2OU

Where can I find this?

6

Troubleshooting / Lost on editing FF7 and FF8

« on: 2020-04-20 13:38:42 »

Is there a single location where comprehensive, up-to-date information on what every tool for FF7/8 edits, including the versions it edits and the data found in the files it edits? I'm confused as to which editors to use for FF7/8, there are multiple editors for the same files in some cases.

7

General Discussion / PSX FF8 Mods?

« on: 2020-03-21 23:24:01 »

Do any mods exist for FF8 PSX which do these things:
1. Change the maximum draw limit (both battle and field) to 100?
2. Rebalance the game in some way?

edit

I downloaded these patches a while ago but I've since forgotten from where. No idea what they are and they have no documentation. Does anyone recognize them?

http://www.mediafire.com/file/qlsphm2a53zts7f/TSFix.zip/file

^This is from either FF8 or FF9, it's for a 4 disc game. It's very small, probably some sort of bugfix.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/vr3gj60gtzpfxma/Final_Fantasy_7_%25281_April_2016%2529.zip/file

^This is a pretty large patch for PSX FF7 but I can't for the life of me find it.

8

Completely Unrelated / Good GB, GBC, and GBA emulators on Android

« on: 2019-02-07 20:32:26 »

Currently using MyBoy and MyOldBoy, which only allow one code or line at a time and don't allow savestates.

9

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / Reading to and writing from disc images for the PS1

« on: 2018-03-29 22:51:44 »

I recently wrote code that handles I/O for PS1 disc images.  You can find it here: https://bitbucket.org/MysticLord/snakeoil/src

I'm posting here so that other people can use my code to make editors for PS1 games and improve the existing ones.  You can use any of my code posted here with any license you want, though as a Linux user I prefer you use an open source license like the BSD or MIT licenses.  I am happy to answer questions about the code, Java, or anything you don't understand.

The classes and files which are relevant to implementing disc image I/O are covered below.


DataHandler.java: methods readFromDiscImage(...) and writeToDiscImage(...).  This is almost all the logic for handling data and file I/O.  It's a little involved, so if you have questions please ask them so I can add better comments.  I also want to write a series of blog posts about disc image I/O; questions will help me determine what is easiest to understand and what isn't.  Also I'm aware that this isn't "proper" java and honestly I don't care.  Object-Orientation is a meme to me.

EDC_ECC_Generator.java: everything in this file is a translation of a python program by abyssonym (which itself is a translation of a C program), which is here: https://github.com/abyssonym/randomtools/blob/master/cdrom_ecc.py

AbstractDataTable: this class and its subclasses are used to store information about data tables.  I needed separate logic to handle data tables that are found at specific addresses in a file, those that are pointer-addressed from elsewhere in a file, those that are always the same length, and those that are variable length.  The actual logic is in DataHandler, but these classes all need to store different information depending on their type.

data.csv: This is where information on data tables is stored, and later read into DataHandler.

L2sq.txt and EDC_crctable.txt: these files are needed to generate EDC and ECC.  Straight copies from abyssonym: https://github.com/abyssonym/randomtools

10

Completely Unrelated / GSHI down?

« on: 2018-01-23 21:20:49 »

I get a SQL error when I try to access it.

11

Scripting and Reverse Engineering / MIPS assembly language tools for Linux?

« on: 2017-08-07 12:24:23 »

What assemblers and disassemblers exist for Linux?

I think that binutils has what I need, but I'm unsure how to use them.