Author Topic: [FF8R] Draw Points  (Read 3294 times)

sleepey

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[FF8R] Draw Points
« on: 2020-10-14 16:37:32 »
I'm trying to update my FF8 randomizer project to work with the Remastered edition and it's been mostly straightforward but the one thing I can't figure out is draw points. In the regular Steam version of the game, the contents of every draw point were stored in a nice tidy block in the main exe file:



eg. the first byte is 0x55 = 0 1 010101
= 0 (normal yield) 1 (renewable) 010101 (spell 21 = cure)
= the cure draw point outside Balamb Garden

Now when I play the remaster, the same data is in memory & it's used the same way...



...But I can't find where that came from on disk. I suspect it's being reconstructed from "ff8_en.exe.dat" in the main zzz archive, just based on the name, but it doesn't resemble the original file at all. Does anyone know how this works?

I do have a backup plan if I can't find it - just going through the field archive changing all the drawpoint calls - but then I'd be limited to the existing set of spells (no Apocalypse, Rapture, etc.) & the patching would take a bit longer. So if this sounds like a pain to deal with don't worry about it, but I would be super grateful for any help. Thanks!
« Last Edit: 2020-10-14 16:46:17 by sleepey »

sleepey

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Re: [FF8R] Draw Points
« Reply #1 on: 2020-10-22 10:35:19 »
Made some progress, the file it's using is FFVIII_EN.exe.dat (which is just a second copy of FF8_EN.exe.dat, so I was kinda right :-X ). It gets unpacked & executed by something called a WEEP emulator. The first 256 bytes are clear so it can read the headers & then there are chunks of zlib compressed data but I'm not sure where the boundaries are yet.